Bob Barnard Track Engineering

Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull, it is nice to see that good guys do finish first. Red Bull had the guts to stand by their ethics and beliefs when everyone was telling them to do otherwise. I personally was wanting Webber to win for obvious reasons, but Vettel will do. Nice job by Button, and well done McLaren, second and third in the race to sew up second in teams Championship, not a year of failure. Congratulations to Renault, great drive by both drivers, did that win Petrov the second seat? It should, the pressure on him must have been tremendous.

So another season is over, and the next will start tomorrow. New rules, new engines and sponsors/owners for the new teams, so there will be changes, but you can expect the usual suspects out front. The big question will be Mercedes, is Michael coming back, will the 2011 car be better?

It seems tracks come and go. Austin is coming, but not quite as fast as was predicted. The latest report is 24 months to build, and they are not scheduled to start until December, and there are planning issues hanging over that date, so that puts us into 2013 for the first race. The way Bernie is going there will be a race in Bangladesh by then.

Edmonton is going, or gone according to reports. It seems the airport wanted to keep one runway open during the IRL race and this required a couple of million to be spent to adjust the track layout. It seems the IRL and the promoter assumed the City would just roll over and cough up, but no. In the US and Canada getting Governments to pay for racetracks is much harder than say Mongolia, or Spain.

McLaren and Red Bull will both let their drivers race this weekend, so we will see if Massa will roll over for Alonso at his home GP. What will we see if Massa is in front of Alonso?

The anticipated shuffle of engineers and team bosses appears to be underway at Mercedes with new race engineers to be brought in to the team next year for both Nico and Michael. Ross Brawn's role is to be "defined."

The rumors are that De La Rosa is going to HRT, with Williams gearbox, next year, and they say they now have a chassis "based" on this years unraced Toyota. HRT must have found some money.

Monza is an anachronism of a race track. Great history and atmosphere, but a bit like the old Hockenheim and Silverstone, long straights interrupted  by a couple of corners, and then we throw in  a couple of chicanes to slow the cars down, but only a little. We all know, except Bob Varsha, despite the fact he had just told us, that it is in a Royal Park and very limited in what it can do, much like Brands Hatch. So why does Bob wonder why "they have not done more with the infield of the old oval?"

What surprises me is the lack of serious accidents. We saw yesterday how Massa narrowly avoided hitting the wall at the Parabolica, and with the extreme speeds and lack of run off I would expect many more incidents. Now I would suspect that that would mean that the drivers are not at ten tenths, leaving a bit on the table, but when you watch that is very hard to believe.

Interesting technical session, especially between the McLarens, and Lewis may yet have made the right decision. OK, he will lose a bit of time in the corners, but you are not going to overtake there anyway. It is at the end of the fast straights where the overtaking will happen, especially Turn 1, and if Lewis can get through the Parabolica OK then he should be in a good place to go by. I mentioned yesterday how fast he was back on the gas at the entry to the Parabolica, and watching today it was noticeable how the quick cars only went back to fifth and were immediately on the gas, whereas the slower cars were going down a lot of gears.

Interesting the Red Bull pair were not in the hunt for the pole. Mark continued to have bad luck in practice, and the commentators questioned the decision not to put a fresh engine in his car for the race. Is Red Bull still playing games? Vettel was never a factor, despite being quick yesterday. Mercedes struggling badly, but Williams continue their good form, and Kubica does wonders with the Renault.

So Rome has done a deal for an F1 GP starting in 2012 or 13. Bulgaria again gets a mention. Where is this going to end? Who are we going to lose? There are a few I could suggest, but I doubt Bernie is going to give up the income from them.

Talking of failed stupid GP bids we had the Donnington Park saga which never made any sense except as a whipping post for Silverstone. So Simon Gillette tears the place up and then goes bankrupt. Along comes Adroit, an engineering company to take over the promotion and fix the mess. Now I am a Civil Engineer who made the transition to Promoter, so gave them the benefit of the doubt, but again I had my doubts to give them the benefit of. Lo and behold after fixing the track they gave the place back to the Wheatcroft's. Robert Fearnall, the tracks long time promoter, said "Adroit is a construction company that realised running a race circuit was outside it's experience." Perhaps they could have realized that before they took it on? This sport is full of people who know nothing about it but think it is glamorous and that they can be successful where others fail.  It would be interesting to know who paid for fixing the track, or was it a freebie from Adroit?

I know I wrote off Allan McNish yesterday after practice, and now he is on pole, but I do not think it is quite that straightforward. It sounds as if the Audi squad got the strategy correct and Peugeot did not, but Davidson is still not worried about the race, and nor would I be. But I have underestimated both Allan and Audi before though.