F1 News, Fun links and comment
- Grim times for Kingfisher and Vijay Mallya. The striking pilots and engineers who have not been paid since March has been asked by the company’s CEO Sanjay Agarwal to return to work on Sunday 13th October. The airline has been grounded for over a week. The Indian Civil Aviation Authority has threatened to revoke their license and has demanded no tickets are sold in the interim. (Economic Times). Mallya does have other investments and is being pressured to sell the liquor business to come up with the cash. Whether Force India as they are will be on the grid 2013 – only time will tell.
- BREAKING NEWS (GMT 12:48) “Force India boss Vijay Mallya has run into more trouble in Hyderabad where the 13th Metropolitan Sessions Court has issued an arrest warrant against him in a case filed by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd which manages the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport”. (AFP News Agency) This warrant is without bail, because representatives failed to attend a hearing today – which means if or when he submits himself to the court he will be detained. It is estimated his airline is $billions in debt. Oh how far it is to fall .(Nice to see we beat the all established F1 sites and writers to this by an hour and 10 mins :D)
- Schumacher says the WDC title is Vettel’s to lose (autohebdo) “I thought Fernando (Alonso) had the advantage prior to Suzuka”, but now he believes it is Vettel’s to lose. Schumacher is certain his compatriot will now enter the exclusive club of winning 3 consecutive titles, a feat only achieved by Fangio (4) and Schumacher(5) himself.
- thejudge13 has been banned from the BBC website – for posting links to this site in the comments section when debating with other F1 fans. Oh well, hopefully people reading our articles will post links all around the world on other F1 blogs and forums for us – only if you think we’re any good mind you.
- There is a rumour I’ve just heard that McLaren have a new Double DRS system like Red Bull introduced in Singapore. We await confirmation – pics will be posted for confirmation. If they do, then qualifying could be very interesting between Red Bull and McLaren – and the Ferraris may be left trailing. If this is true then it may be they were sandbagging today whilst configuring the system.
- Sunsets appear to be most popular with the F1 fraternity, with numerous pictures a day being posted to the twittersphere. A Sample – (pic1), (pic 2), (pic 3) (pic4) there were plenty more… but here’s a signature image of the Korean venue provided by Caterham (pic) and a similar one from Shellmotorsport (pic), though I doubt FOM TV will show us this angle.
- From a very dull senior team representative press conference, it appears McLaren have no new engines left for the season yet Paddy Lowe claims engine use is going to plan. Which plan, A,B C…J? Mmm. 8 Engines, 20 races….. and still 5 races to go? Okay that’s a bit of fun and they may have 5 engines with only 1 race each run on them – but teams say they save new engines for the power tracks. At least 1 of the last 5 venues is surely in the top 8 power hungry tracks.
- Charles Pic has to have a new engine, but its his 9th of the year. 10 place grid penalty!!! Won’t make much difference then.
- I did a fun piece on the Lewis/Jenson twitter break up earlier this week (link) and the inevitable happened at the press conference yesterday. Lewis said he’s apologised to Jenson for his mistake and sadly added “Maybe Twitter and me don’t go too well at the moment. I need to step back and think about how I try and improve that.” Hopefully this will not be a return to bland corporate speak from Hamilton. Jenson has milked this and took the opportunity to lecture Hamilton saying, “You have to be careful what you put on Twitter. We’ve got over a million followers. It is what it is, and Lewis apologised to me.” Yet the likeable, smooth, suave Jenson has been stirring the pot on the quiet and he adds, “There are millions of people to follow on Twitter. I see him [Hamilton] every weekend”. Yet Jenson is being disingenuous because he started following Perez as soon as he signed for McLaren and further, I’ve had a lot of people tell me since I wrote the story that Jenson was in the past following Lewis on his old twitter name, the people who told me this were following them both at the same time. (UPDATE SINCE WRITING THIS) Kevin Eason has done an interesting piece in the London Times about what happened outside the press conference – basically he suggests Jenson is taking the high moral ground and almost lecturing and belittling Lewis, Lewis spent most of the day being contrite and apologetic. What a turnaround in a couple of years. When Jenson joined McLaren there were those who thought he was crazy as Lewis WDC champion had ‘his’ team built around him. Now its Jenson bossing the shots and Lewis leaving. Jenson needs to be careful as his loveable fun carefree image is revealing a dark side at present.
- Stewards are getting tougher and tougher. Schumacher received a reprimand for….wait for it… impeding Pedro de la Rosa. Big teams getting penalties or reprimands for impeding those at the back of the grid never used to happen in F1. Schumacher had a similar reprimand in Spain but this was for impeding Hamilton and of course Vettel was reprimanded for impeding Alonso during qualifying last week in Japan. Let’s hope this incremental tougher attitude of the stewards is maintained as long as the teams are dealt with even handedly. I still feel Grosjean’s ban following Spa was excessive.
- Just how many glossy English speaking F1 magazines can the market support? Another one landed in my world yesterday, GPInternational.co.uk. It had an app to download on my IPhone, but I couldn’t get it to work properly. Mmm. Pics looked good and an interesting article from Will Buxton about how F1 squabbling has caused them to miss the boat on a fantastic New York City Times Square epic event with all teams present. Yet when its £5 I won’t bother. Other mag’s I’m aware of F1Racing.co.uk (also £5 I think), then there’s Grand Prix+ from Joe Saward (an e-magazine he produces for a few hours after each race (subscription £30 pa for 22 editions) and the one I read is GPweek.com another e-magazine and is free of charge (oops just checked my free introductory period is over) 40 issues a year for £37. It was a pretty good read whilst I had it for free. Being a social media believer, I refuse to pay for these things, as I prefer more immediate and interactive information. I suppose the older F1 fans are used to it – wonder how long they’ll all last.
(This page will update through the day as more stories come online)
Please leave a comment with your observations.
Follow me on twitter (box to click in right hand column) if you are part of the twittersphere and retweet our tweets that show a new article has been written, it helps spread the word – if you are not twittered up you can click on the button at the top right of the page to receive an email when (and only when) a new article hits the net.
Judge, expect a lot of penalties this weekend as Martin Donnelly is the driver steward.
you’re right. We’ve seen that already. Nico had to answer for something and nothing. Schumacher reprimanded. Wonder if we’ll see another ban if there’s a serious bump
Regarding point 4 – however unfair you feel it is, I have sympathy with the BBC not allowing you posting links on their forum. In my professional capacity as a web developer, this sort of thing happens often and is more often than not done by spammers.
Ironically however, I did find this site via a link you posted on James Allen’s website, and I must say it is a most excellent site. So I can see both sides. I also follow you on Twitter 🙂
Keep up the good work, and don’t be too harsh on the BBC for their policy!
Chris
I understand that, and my comment is a little tongue in cheek. I’ve had about 4,000 reads from 11 links in 4 weeks since we began so I can’t complain.
I could register with the BBC and do it all again, but the site is becoming self sufficient now
James is different, he was the first of the F1 paddock to embrace social media and gets the multiplication opportunities this brings. We have exported a lot of traffic in my source quotes to his site, just as you found us.
What’s silly about the BBC is I wasn’t just sticking a URL up there, I was engaging in debate with others and all the comments stood up to the thread without the need to click through.
It was 11 links I think in total I placed over 4 weeks, and if the mod had bothered to check them – again they were all relevant.
No worries, a few people who came via the BBC links (like you did with James Allen) have emailed to say they will post on my behalf.
My sin was putting multiple similar links in the same registered account. thejudge13 will not suffer the same software scanning.
I could give you other examples of sites being protective, but when our story gets told in the future – those details will come out. Check out the “thejudge13 project” page.
Thanks for your valuable contribution though and I hope we continue to do what is primarily important – write good stuff
Fair enough and thanks for your frank reply. On a totally different subject (and I’ll totally understand if you don’t want to answer as some people like to preserve their anonymity on the Internet), I’d be fascinated to know where you saw the Northern Lights in this country that you mentioned the other day. I’m guessing somewhere up in Scotland?
Have to stay anonymous fraid. I believe there were places as far south as Birmingham with sightings that night. I even heard reports that this year they have been so powerful they’ve been seen in Southern Italy. Can’t confirm though
Fair enough I wasn’t trying to pry. Just something I’ve always wanted to see for myself and so far have never been lucky enough to view!
no worries – got contacts to protect that’s all. I went to Scandenavia this year to see them and it was amazing. Don’t do the flight only trip – out and back from UK, no one ever sees anything on them. Save up and spend no less than 3 nights pref more in Finland, Norway or Sweden in Jan/Feb