TRACK DESIGN – AN ALTERNATE VIEW

Robert  "Bob” Barnard, (born September 20, 1946 in London), is a track designer and promoter. A qualified Civil Engineer, Bob moved to Australia in 1969 and raced successfully in historic sports cars and Formula Junior. In 1985 Bob was the Engineering Project Manager for the inaugural Formula One Grand Prix in Adelaide. Bob then rebuilt the historic Phillip Island Circuit and promoted the1989,90 & 91 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix. He also built Eastern Creek in Sydney before moving to Spain with Kenny Roberts, and subsequently the US to promote the 1993 US Motorcycle GP for Kenny at Laguna Seca. Bob rebuilt Road Atlanta while the Exceutive Raceway Director and was the Operations Director for the inaugural Petit Le Mans in 1998. Bob continues to be active in track design and track safety, and was part of the team that rebuilt Daytona in 2004. Bob is leading the SCCA program to train new track reviewers and is working on a new private track in Georgia.

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This is an address Bob Barnard gave to the Professional Circuit Owners, Investors and Suppliers Forum in New York this April.

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I am gratified that at last the design and construction of motor race venues has been elevated to a “profession,” although I fear we still have some way to go to confirm that in some people’s minds. Earlier this year in an interview the owner of the Algarve circuit was asked who designed it he said. “I did, but I had a professional do the buildings.” I guess that puts us back in our place!

First off I do not have any pretty pictures so you are going to have to put up with me talking. 

I’m going to present to you with a personal view on track design that some of you may find outdated, and I may be ending a great career, but so be it. I happen to be passionate about the sport and I would like to think that as an old curmudgeon I can stir up some ideas and discussion about where we are going and how we do it. I want to talk about avoiding an over – reliance on computers and simulation while not examining what we already have as examples in front of us. He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it.

While preparing for this presentation it occurred to me that if simulation is so good now, why do we go to the time, trouble, expense and risk of actually flying all over the world and running races? Why don’t we just set up a simulator in each drivers home and have them race on those! Think of how green that is, no gas used or tires, no one gets hurt and no expensive cars get damaged. Not real though is it, different things happen when it’s real.  Just look at Malaysia or China.  As we say in the US, that is why we play the game.

I grew up in that era just after the abacus and at school used a pen, my brain and some logarithmic tables. At University I graduated to a slide rule, and calculators appeared about the time I was leaving. The University had a computer, The University, not the College, and we would walk down the road to the two-storey house it required with our stack of FORTRAN coded punch cards and come back a week later hoping we had something more than 150 pages of error messages. Unfortunately that was what I usually had. Fast forward to the 85 Adelaide GP. Our computer still took up a room, and ran in batch form overnight, so at least we progressed. The PC was a new invention, but I had not seen one, let alone used it. So we did our calculations the old way, and we actually had a pretty close estimate of lap time. In fact we just snuck in the last lap before the two hour limit.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I am no “Luddite,” that’s an old English term for someone who does not embrace new technology. I use the computer as well as the next man, but it is only a tool and should aid thought, not replace it.

We track designers need all the help we can get. We carry an enormous burden of responsibility, not just in safety, but in creating good tracks for drivers and spectators, tracks that are economically efficient for owners, meet noise and other environmental requirements, have good access etc. etc. I am an adherent to Sam Michael’s recent comment that track design is the biggest single factor in producing great races. I do not know about you but I know I’m not being paid enough for all that responsibility!

In reading recent articles I am concerned at the emphasis being placed on simulation, both for initial layout and for track safety, which of course should go hand in hand, but unfortunately I see too often that they are separate exercises. When I read of the FIA program for calculating lap times to a nano-second and then calculating run off, two words come to mind, “Jurassic Park.” If anything best represents “Chaos Theory” then a racing accident is it. During every race I think we see examples of incidents that make us go “uhm”, “didn’t expect that.” Look at Scott Sharp’s accident at last year’s Petit Le Mans. I just happened to be standing about 100 feet away, and the noise was uncanny, like a large Frisbee. I don’t know what the coefficient of friction for air is, but I bet it is not part of the FIA simulation.

When I rebuilt Road Atlanta in ’98 I did not foresee that occurrence, but I knew from experience that something was likely to happen there and installed an FIA standard catch fence, which was lucky for the twenty spectators who would probably be dead now if I hadn’t. That was a decision based on empirical rather than mathematical decisions.

For all of history man has been working on the basis of empirical information. I will give you two instances. Many years ago I was sent to a symposium on explosives for breaking rock. Now ever since the Chinese invented gunpowder we’ve been blowing things up very well without really knowing what went on when we lit the blue touch paper. This symposium was aimed at trying to understand what was happening and so presumably improve what we were doing. It was attended by practitioners like myself and academics. We listened to two days of concepts and calculations. Finally a wise old Swedish Professor from Alfred Noble & Sons described the latest wide spaced blasting technique, a technique that flew in the face of all experience and theories. At the end one of the academics asked the Prof why it worked, and he wonderfully answered, “Who gives a damn why it works, it works!” At which all of us practitioners cheered wildly.

I attended a similar workshop on asphalt road design. Now the performance of differing designs of roads on different soils with varying traffic numbers has been studied by people like the Corps of Engineers for 100 years, and an empirical design method developed that has served us very well. A visiting US academic spent two days again putting forward concepts and calculations, at the end of which he did a case study. The empirical method came up with thirteen and half inches of pavement, and the calculation thirteen, but as it was a Federal funded road they put in thirteen and half inches anyway!

This brings me to the 90/10 rule. Prior to the Adelaide GP I was a Chief Estimator for a major construction company. I learned that in any estimate 10% of the items of a project would be worth 90% of the total, and only took 10% of the effort to calculate. The other 10% would take 90% of the time and in the end you were better off to make an educated guess for each of those items as the errors would even themselves out. A fisherman once told me that it worked for them as well, 90% of the fish are in 10% of the lake, but would take 90% of the time to find them. What I am saying in this context is that yes, we can use simulation to help us get most of the way there, but in the end experience and knowledge from that best of all computers, the brain, should complete the work. I personally like to do the speed and run off calculations by hand anyway, as the process is more important to me to obtain an understanding and appreciation of what is happening on the track, than a result that is accurate to a thousandth of a second but not understood.

When I read about using simulation to design corners rather than rely on looking at existing tracks, as if that is “old” thinking, I wonder what they are simulating? Presumably F1 cars, but which one, and for who, under what conditions. We have 24 cars out there this year, not twelve teams, as each driver is going to have different set ups, look at Button and Barrichello last year. Look at what a few degrees in track temperature will do to the handling. Which of the two tire choices do they have on? Think about this year with full fuel loads at the start of the race and none at the end and the effect of new and old tires; is it raining, is the driver Hamilton or Button or Bruno Senna? Designing tracks to suit a certain car makes no sense when the rules change almost yearly. Is each and every corner going to be designed for that, and every track? What about other track users, will it work for them?    

This is supposed to be Road Racing, the teams and drivers should be challenged to make their car work better than the opposition on what we construct, or select if it is a street circuit. Yes, we need to understand what works, but not to the extent of making it suit a certain vehicle. In what other sport is the playing field designed to suit the competitor? Are tennis courts bigger and the net higher to suit the technology of racquets and balls and the improved abilities of the players? Does basketball make the ring higher because every player can now dunk the ball? Yes in golf they lengthen the fairways to suit the improved clubs, but they don’t design the green to suit the latest putter or Tiger Wood’s style.

No one simulated Eau Rouge, I doubt they had a computer when they changed Spa to include Pouhon, and John Hugenholtz certainly did not have one when he did Suzuka and the 130R. Has simulation produced better corners than this? I read recently that “Modern Corners” were being installed in an existing track. I did not know that all this time I had been designing old fashioned ones. I’m not even sure what modern corners look like, except perhaps those angular kinks that seem to populate tracks these days. Where I come from all they do is produce a one-line race track.

Let’s talk about consulting drivers. One of my more famous quotes is “drivers are like attorneys, they all have an opinion.” Yes I talk to drivers, but they will tell you what they think will suit their style or current car. Alan Jones told me at Eastern Creek that I needed more right angled corners. I knew what he meant, but told him cars do not go around corners in a right angle, although sometimes it looks like it these days.

Mat Mladdin, multi AMA Champion said the first time he saw Road Atlanta, “Mate, you’ve got to put a corner half way down that straight!” He had just joined Suzuki and was down on HP to the Honda, so he knew they would blow by him. When he had the Suzuki going right he never suggested that again.

Most drivers cannot really explain what they do, look at the few that make good commentators. The one “driver” that really has helped me was motorcycle King Kenny and his insights as to what makes Phillip Island so good and other tracks so bad, but Kenny is unique, the thinking man’s motorcycle champion. By all means let’s consult them, but let’s talk to other users and distill the results.

So, we’ve started laying out our track and now we’re examining the safety requirements. Again we have at our disposal calculations on what run-off we should allow in each situation, recently updated with a complicated equation that certainly does better represent what happens on track. But I am aware of how often in my Civil Engineering profession we have been bitten when thinking we understood what was going on so well we could refine our design or trim a bit of safety factor. As I have already indicated, accidents like Scott Sharp, or Edwards and Newman at Talladega last year, defy simulation. Massa’s incident is another situation that would defy the odds that the spring would come loose, and would bounce perfectly into the path of Massa. Except I guess those of us who watched “Grand Prix” would expect at some time that something like this was going to happen, and thank goodness those guys at the FIA foresaw the chance and regulated for better helmets.

It is the 90/10 rule again, we need the basis for our deliberations, but that last piece should be based upon experience and knowledge. How many of us have been subjected to an inspection to be told, “I know this meets the rules but it does not look right.” Who is to argue? When working with Derek Ongaro, John Corschmidt, or Kirk Russell here in the States I never noticed them walking around with the rule book, calculator, or computer. They were looking at what they were seeing, comparing it in their personal computer, their brain, with what they had seen at other places and other incidents and making determinations based on that.

To wrap up then, we track designers have a responsibility to foresee every eventuality, although I have been known to tell an attorney that if his client could have foreseen what was going to happen he would not have got in the car. We need all the tools we can find, and relying on just part of the equation will not get it done. We have 100 years of racing history to draw on, great tracks to learn from, smart people to talk to, and we need to draw on them all. Personally I put more faith in what I can see and touch rather than what a computer spits out. But that’s the point I guess, we must each live with our own decisions. It is often a thankless task, subject to armchair critics and others closer to the action, but in the end we are probably our own worst critics, and that is perhaps how it should be.        



Bob Barnard April 2010