Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. Click on the button at the top right of the page to receive an email when (and only when) a new article hits the interweb. 

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

Note from thejudge13’s chambers: We hit 600 email followers yesterday and all in less than 18 weeks. Just over 450 on twitter and about 1,000 of you come direct from your browser/as a saved favourite. RSS appears to be stuck on 14 – but it said this on day 1 I put up the RSS feed – so my RSS reader may be telling porkies.

Anyway a big shout out to ‘ForzaJay’ from the forum www.thescuderia.net who posted a link to my ‘Da Vinci Code’ type article from yesterday and we had loads of reads from his colleagues there. Please say Hi ‘ForzaJay’ when you are here next.

Also Hi to ‘Tonka’ from Autosportforums who did the same with my article on Adam Parr, “Ecclestone, Parr and the night of the long knives”.

If any of you visit other F1 sites, please feel free to post links to an article on TJ13 that is relevent to whatever discussions are taking place in their forums/comments. Helps spread the word greatly. Grazzia 😀

One final word. There is a now a search tool on the right hand side. I use this daily to find stuff I’ve written before. If you want to exclude loads of things coming up as results try to use a 2 or 3 word search in “” eg. “Vettel yellow flag”. It searches the content of articles not just the titles so its pretty useful.

On to the day’s events – new’s is a little light so far, so I’ll publish this page and add to it as the day progresses.

Adam Parr to be sued: Global Motorsport Media, who produce exclusively F1 content for publication around the world have commenced legal proceedings against Adam Parr for infringement of its rights of copyright. In his much lauded recent publication, “The Art of War: Five Years in Formula 1″ Mr. Parr has apparently published an article word for word entitled, ‘Wolf should step up at Williams, Ecclestone” – found on page 70 of his book. (F1SA.com via Scuderia McLaren – he said making sure all sources are happy)

GMM claim they hold the rights to that article and their director and editor, Andrew Maitland said this, “In 12 years of supplying daily F1 news to GMM’s faithful clients, literally tens of thousands of headlines, not a single formal copyright claim has ever been filed against us. In Mr. Parr’s first ever act of publishing, he has committed a breach that is as simple to prove as it is for anyone to flick to page 70 and recognise that the person who wrote those words did not give Mr. Parr permission to reproduce them.”

“I have attempted to resolve this matter with Mr. Parr privately and completely confidentially for almost 6 weeks, but he has made it abundantly clear that his subjective calculation of a ‘market rate’ for a single GMM article constitutes his first and final offer of settlement. Having disregarded my entrepreneurial right to negotiate in advance the value of my work and either grant or refuse permission, he also ignores that he sold scores of books that should have identified GMM or myself as the author. Mr. Parr, a trained and practiced barrister, seems also to be overlooking the criminal seriousness of violating copyright law so fundamentally.”

This area of the law is not my speciality I’m afraid so I was discussing this with Mrs J, who is legally trained. I could understand Mr. Parr being allegedly in breach for not citing his source and giving it accreditation, but I didn’t understand the ‘permission to publish’ requirement.

Apparently Mr. Parr would be in breach of copyright on two counts, if he cited more than a specific % of an entire article without permission (Mrs J thinks about 10%), so if Adam had published word for word 169 out of 182 words from another source – this would require permission.

However, I suspect this is not going to be a major problem for Adam Parr – Mrs J thinks it appears a minor infringement. However, Andrew Maitland has nicely brought his company into the spotlight and presumably has since generated a number of enquiries about supplying ‘licensed’ F1 material for various F1 news outlets.

Another great chart from @DieHard_F1-Fan

Why do we bother? We had Mr. Herbert’s views on all matters pertaining to ‘F1 Stewarding’ a few days ago and now the insightful SKY pundit is sharing his unique perceptions with us again. I just read an article with the longest title I’ve seen for some time on PlanetF1.

Deep breath everyone…”Johnny Herbert believes unless Mercedes can sort out their development woes then it is unlikely that they will challenge at the front this season.” (and I get some stick for awkward grammar 😉 ).

In a masterclass of stating the obvious Johnny tells us, “”People say that Mercedes will be in the best position for 2014 and they will have the best engine. That may be so, but they need a good car as well as there is no point having the best engine in a bad car. That is something they have to work on and hopefully it will be something that Lewis can utilise.” – the car or the engine or both I wonder?

There are several hundred words in quotable paragraphs from Johnny, but I’ll summarise them for you. It will be good for Jenson to lead the team…Lewis is in the doo doo…Mercedes yet to make a decent car…maybe new people recruited 2012 will change that…Lewis will get best from car…maybe Lewis can win 2nd title…rules haven’t changed…[and to finish a little quote], “If we can have a repeat of 2012, it would be an amazing thing to have again.”.

Taxi to the North Pole? Anyway, that’s my bit of fun for the day.

Autosport show review: I continue the series of videos from last weekends event. This guy may be getting on but is real class. World champion on 2 and 4 wheels

Fernando blanks thejudg13: Yesterday Fernando was talking to his 1,423,654 followers on twitter, so I thought I’d try to engage him. @Alo_official was informing us of his busy schedule which included, “Relax morning recovering in the hotel from the last trips. 30 minutes of exercise this afternoon and 1h of video messages for sponsors.”

I thought a witty quip would do the trick and catch the great man’s eye – so I tweeted back, “Maybe say “Buy Puma sneakers cos Fernando is faster than you” – “Buy Tag Heur & you can see how much Fernando is faster than you ;)”. Nnada. Maybe Fernando doesn’t find the memorable catch line very funny.

Anyway why hasn’t Fernando splashed out and bought the @fernandoalonso twitter name used by one of his Spanish fans? The person who has it has 48,000 tweeps following him and a link to a marketing website which is presumably his business. Still I reckon a few hundred thousand euro’s would prise it out of him.

Jerez Testing News: We know the first of the driver line up for day 1 Jerez as Daniel Ricciardo tells us in a personal blog that discusses putting his razor down, soaking up the Australian sun, fishing, quad biking and snorkelling before training hard for 2013. here. (Sorry embed code didn’t work).

Ferrari appoint De La Rosa: Of course, as soon as I published the page, this news broke. Stefano explains the thinking behind De La Rosa’s recruitment. “We must anticipate problems we have and focus on simulation. We think Pedro is the right person to develop this type of activity. We think he is a driver that fits well within our group.”

Stefano denies any nepotism, “Clearly the fact that Pedro has a good relationship with Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa is a positive factor, but the decision is purely technical,” we are assured.

Pedro is delighted to be re-united with Fernando following the year they spent together at McLaren. “It is amazingly motivating to be working for a team like Ferrari, not just because of what it represents in the history of Formula 1 and motoring in general, but also because it will be a completely new and very stimulating experience for me.”

“I really hope I can get to work as soon as possible and to help in the development of the car. I am happy to be collaborating with Fernando again and also to be working with Felipe. There’s not much time until Australia, but there is a lot to do and I am available to help the team from right now.”

The driver’s employed by Ferrari not in an F1 seat already include Jules Bianchi, Davide Rigon, Andrea Bertolini and Marc Gene.

TJ13 did report yesterday that De La Rosa was speaking to a number of teams and that Perez had requested they recruit him (LINK). 2 things spring to mind, if McLaren were thinking of giving Perez a friendly Latin face around the MTC – Ferrari moved swiftly. It’s just a shame Force India don’t have such a decisive attitude – or as I mentioned earlier in the week – it would be understandable if there were very, very big financial matters that required attending to first. eg Sale of all or part of the team.

Stefano on all things Scuderia: The glamerous ski resort of Madonna di Campiglio bedecks itself in Ferrari red every new year and welcomes WROOOM, the traditional new year meeting with the press of the Ferrari Marlboro and Ducati Marlboro teams.

This year the event is from the 14th to 19th January and there will be a packed program of events including skiing competitions, torchlight processions, press conferences, and opportunities for fans from around the world to see exhibitions of the cars and bikes and to have fun as the engines warm up for the start of the next F1 and MotoGp season.

Today Stefano held court early doors and had a number of things to say to the assembled group.

Influence on Force India: TJ13 did a piece on the possible negotiations taking place between Ferrari and Force India for them to switch engine suppliers from Mercedes to Maranello for their 2014 power trains. It has been rumoured that part of these negotiations are to persuade Force India to employ Jules Bianchi in 2013 – a Ferrari young driver programme protoge.

Here’s what Stefano had to say on the matter. “We are looking at solutions for him, to enable him to move forward and show his value in F1, but there is no further information at the moment.” Having lost Toro Rosso as an engine customer for 2014, Ferrari will surely be looking to replace them with another customer.

Vettel/Alonso dream team: “We have always said, and I think that the president [LdM] also declared, that a dream team is something extraordinary if it is well managed and if things work well,” Dominicali explains, “For now, I think that this is not our goal. We have to maximise the balance of our performance of the team. We must be very careful.”

“It is not just in F1 because it is true also in the world of sport. If you put all the number ones together around the table it can be more damaging than positive. So for the time being, this is not our goal.” Barcelona FC and Real Madrid haven’t done too badly with array of so called ‘galactico’ mega stars. But then football is a team game.

In fact, If I was trying to justify this, I woud argue differently from Dominicali – F1 is unique in world sport and therefore comparisons are difficult – meaning 2 ‘roosters’ may cock it all up.

Alonso compared to Lewis: Here’s the stat’s for the pair when they were at McLaren in 2007. 4 wins each, 12 podiums each 109 points each, Lewis had 6 poles to Alonso’s 2 and outqualified him 10-7.  Since then Lewis has won 17 races to Fernando’s 11 but Alonso was at Renault for 2 years where he had a mere 2 wins whilst Lewis had 7 during that time.

Heres an in depth look at the comparison between the 2 drivers I enjoyed reading from F1Fanatic.

Ferrari to unveil the F2013 1st Feb: This will take place in Maranello. Force India are to launch there car at Silverstone the same day, I wonder whether they will have 2 drivers by then or still none announced – or maybe new part or full owners.

On this day in F1, Jan 16th

1935 : The birth in Houston of the man who became known as the King of the Indy. In Formula One terms, AJ Foyt is a footnote, his three FIA World Championship appearances coming at the Indianapolis 500 in its last years when it counted towards the title. But he was the first person to win the race four times and the only one to have driven in it for 35 consecutive years. He did 4,909 laps around the oval for a total of 12,272½ miles. He earned $2,637,963 competing in the Indy 500.

His seven national Indy car championships remain a record. So do his 67 Indy car victories, which are 15 more than the No. 2 driver, Mario Andretti. One year, Foyt won an astounding 10 of 13 races. He succeeded in other forms of racing as well. He is the only driver to achieve this triple: victories in the Indy 500, NASCAR’s Daytona 500 (in 1972) and the 24 Hours of Le Mans international sports car race (with Dan Gurney in 1967). And no other driver has at least 20 victories in USAC’s four major categories: Indy cars, stock cars (41), sprint cars (28) and midgets (20). In the 1980s, with his career in Indy car racing on the down side, he won the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Daytona twice.

1955 : More from Argentina as the country hosted the first round of the F1 championship, and what was an endurance race in fierce heat – only seven starters finished – was won by Juan Manuel Fangio. It was his first win in a season where he went on to secure the second of his fourth consecutive drivers’ titles. It was a gruelling afternoon. Only Fangio and fifth-placed Roberto Mieres drove the entire distance without the help of a co-driver, and even the indestructible Fangio had to make one lengthy stop for drinks and a cool down.

There is no footage I can find from 1955 Argentina GP. So here’s 4 minutes on Fangio anyway