Good honest deceit. What happened to Honeywell?

· by · in Judges Chambers. ·

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Well we truly are living in historic times. 600 years or so since the resignation of the last Holy Father and it may be 600 more before Bernie decides to relinquish his throne too. I was amused by the fact that His Holiness chose to announce his resignation in Latin and there was only 1 reporter there who knew what he was saying and had the hugest exclusive scoop. So kids – lessons learned. Get your head down with Latin homework.

I have noticed further similarities between the Pope and his F1 peer – Mr. E; maybe the reason we seem to hear gobbledygook when our F1’s supremo makes his pronouncements is because he too is speaking in a nigh on extinct ancient language.

Pressing on to more important matters. First up, a big thanks to those of you recently contributing to thejudge13. Take a couple of minutes to read ‘the project’ page, I’ve updated it today.

We need writers to do factual pieces and can help you with that, video people to develop the YouTube channel, people who can simply post the odd link on other sites to send us new readers. If you have just 1 hour a week and will commit to that, I’m sure there’s some way you can be part of the growing TJ13 team. To get closer to F1, you have to move from where you are 😉

Judge’s chambers are where I muse without recourse necessarily to direct quotations, citations and all the proper and correct writing accreditation methodology’s. Most of what we’ll discuss will have been well documented in the blog somewhere – and our subsequent discussions will also allow freedom of expression (within reason) without detailed sourcing  credits for our points of view.

Well, here’s a thing. There was a big announcement a couple of months ago and much of the serious F1 media reported it due to the credibility of the source. I have to say I was most bemused over the wekks that followed that ‘the deal’ that was leaked had not been confirmed.

I heard  some stories in Jerez regarding this ‘big announcement’ that made me smile. I can’t confirm whether what I am about to say is absolutely true, but I can assure you there people within the team concerned who find the whole matter quite amusing.

I want to take you back to the Belgium Grand Prix last year, an event I was most fortunate to be taken to as a guest by a major F1 sponsor. It was of course the unfortunate occasion of the largest first corner pile up we have seen for some time in F1. As an aside, I’m sure we used to see many more of these in the 80’s and 90’s but maybe my memory is tainted.

No matter, Romain Grosjean was the first driver sanctioned with a one race ban in many years for his adjudged reckless driving that caused both Lewis and Fernando to enjoy the majority of the race from the comfort of the pit garage.

If you read my post race analysis, in my humble opinion, Grosjean was unjustly treated – and to this day I feel that Lewis kept his foot i unnecessarily and was in at least part culpable. This then led to a media witch hunt the majority of whom began a smear campaign over the 7 first lap incidents Romain had encountered during the season to date.

All this while the real crashmeister, Pastor Maldonado had been escaping all season proper sanction for multiple driving improprieties far more regularly. Romain was just unfortunate that this incident took out 2 of the ‘big name’ drivers and this apparently affected the title race and the eventual winner of the WDC at the close of the season.

This takes us to one of my favourite ex-F1 triple world champions. Jack. During the following 3 weeks, the BBC decided that they would publish 3 articles from our favourite Scottish driver. Each of these publications relentlessly gave air to Stewart’s opinion that Romain would benefit greatly from his mentoring.

jacks

There are those who know far better than I and who have given me their considered opinion that the young Frenchman is a real and exceptional F1 talent and a genuine F1 drivers’ champion of the future. No wonder Stewart wanted to be credited as the one who creates the next F1 star. (see ‘…eager to…prevent…jeopardising his career’ BBC)

I was greatly impressed with the way Romain handled this difficult time and resisted the overtures of one so esteemed in the F1 community. Of course as TJ13 reported a few weeks back, Grosjean did seek the help of a sports psychologist and if those ‘who know’ are to believed, he will push Kimi hard this year.

This winter appears to have been the close season of utter uncertainty surrounding driver line up. Maybe the Force India, Marussia and Caterham dithering is explained fairly easily. However, the Lotus failure to confirm Romain was a little strange for a while, particularly when you consider Eric Boulier’s personal endorsements.

Unconfirmed rumours emerged over the festive period that Total were unhappy with Lotus F1 proposal to race with Grosjean in 2013. They have been running some safety campaign and felt bizarrely that his crash in Spa and other dubious incidents compromised the integrity of their message. To you and I this obviously appears an absurd comparison for Total to have concern toward. So I suspected at the time there may have been other agenda’s in play.

The Partnership PracticeWith Coca-Cola on board, Genii appeared to have pulled another master stroke by engaging a title sponsor – American technology giant Honeywell – for reported $30m per anum. This news was leaked and reported widely in the F1 media. The Partnership Practice played out their role well, denying that such a deal was imminent, whilst not denying negotiations were ongoing.

The story meandered off into the distance and as yet, nothing came of the matter. However, I heard last week that the Honeywell rumour was a stroke pulled by Genii to keep Total in line. The bait for Honeywell was a technology company in which Genii retains a shareholding in exchange for capital.

honeywell

TJ13 was one of the first to break the Lotus/Honeywell rumour on Nov 30th (Google ‘Honeywell Lotus’ and TJ13 appears on page 1 of the search with earliest date of all articles), and by the 9th of December – Romain was confirmed as Kimi’s partner for 2013.

However, I have hit a brick wall with the company used as lure for Honeywell. Genii and partners invested in a technology company by the name of ‘Zinc Imaging’ to the tune of $35m about 12 months ago however this is not of great significance because one of their main sectors for investment is ‘technology’. Hence the attraction for Honeywell could have been a stake/ownership of any number of  organisations where Genii presently hold shares.

I’m beginning to admire Genii somewhat. They play the same sport as CVC, but appear to have genuine abilities to invest in proper organisations and assist them in growing. Further, for the time being they appear to be genuinely interested in developing the Lotus F1 team and increasing sponsorship support for the historic marque.

They are the essential Yin in juxtaposition to CVC’s Yang.

21 responses to “Good honest deceit. What happened to Honeywell?”

  1. Regarding the Spa incident, I believe you are far far in the wrong regarding Grosjean. You fail to take into consideration the duration of the incident prior to the impact and the fact the incident unfolded while the drivers ahead were already braking for the hairpin. Grosjean forced their wheels to lock, how does a driver get out of that by lifting?

  2. TJ, with all these new sub-sections opening up can you confirm that all new articles will still appear on the main page in the order they were published?

    If I could, I’d like to avoid having to check each sub section every day for your new content.

    • I hope I don’t speak out of turn, but there’s some background mumbling, some of it emanating from me, though I intend to mumble a bit harder now, to sort out the publishing layout to better concentrate attention to, for wont of better description, where each to their own wants to pay attention. I am sure there will be a practical response to your concern before long, or that at least is one of the things high up on my list of arguments. As of now, the back room is quietly – but quickly – assembling its resources. (I’ve been too busy writing the code for the “Kill JoJ Comments” button 🙂 )

    • Hi there

      We are exploring the technology at present but for now, that will be the case.

      The problem at the moment is for people to find articles even 4-5 days old is they have a lot of scrolling down to do.

      It may be we can keep the current day’s posts or those from the last 2 days in this page – I am in the hands of the techies though. But hear what you say.

      • Perhaps use a side bar that can show the most popular articles from each major sub section for the last 5 days?

        Using too much side bar may use up real estate limited by phones, if a target of yours is to maintain mobile friendliness (I assume it is), perhaps a menu that can be quickly swiped over to toggle it and back would work. For the desktop readers, this bar may be visible all the time?

        The trick is, the sub sections involve reloading the page every time you navigate to a new one. So you almost need a 5day hub that collects recent postings from each category into a concise package, as well as the most recent hub (current main page) for us daily readers. The side bar idea is an attempt to implement a ‘5day hub’ onto the main daily page.

      • Long and short of it is, I like how the site operates currently. So I hope any enhancement doesn’t hinder the daily reader looking for the latest of all your goodies.

        • It won’t do that. Don’t worry. People looking at it are ‘users’ first and foremost, but there’s a lot more content coming.

          We will show F1 powers that be what ‘just’ fans can do.

  3. in my opinion Romain still driving for lotus only because the manager of that team is also his manager…. don’t forget when he drove for Lotus for the first time in 2009 he used to do the same mistakes…. famously crashing the car at the same spot Piquet Jr did it before…. and also few more incidents involving not so great Luca Badoer and Jenson Button… I think Lotus Renault has at this point a lot better options, names like Kovalainen or Sutil – only to give you few examples, waiting for a phone call. I know Grosjean was already confirmed, but I think his career in F1 is hanging on a thread, Lotus expecting great results in order to challange Ferrari and McLaren for the podium…. I don’t like when the kid tries to put a smiley face for the cameras and than goes full throttle towards the first corner of every race.
    You are doing a very good job with this Blog…. I keep coming here every day.

  4. Completely off topic but since we are trying to become one big community with mutual benefits: anyone living around the London-Silverstone-Birmingham area that is willing to act as my ‘UK hub’ for F1-related books that I’m occassionally buying in the UK but that are so expensive to ship to continental Europe one-by-one? I’m driving over two-three times a year for pick-up and you can read for as long as books are in the hub!-)

  5. One thing I have learned from sim-racing, and in particular iRacing, is that it always takes two to tango. In this case, Hamilton could have eased off and avoided contact with Grosjean as he came across him. He would have had to react quickly as Grosjean wasn’t fully past him, but the option was always there. This would have avoided any contact and they would have gotten through Turn 1. Grosjean might even have taken those ahead off anyway by braking late and then Hamilton would have gained places (or taken him on the run down to Les Combes). He would have thought it was not an ideal start, but when racing more unpredictable drivers you should be prepared to alter your plans, at risk of not making the finish if you do not.

    As Hamilton is an aggressive racer pretty much all of the time (a reason why he is so revered) he was committed to going for the maximum (keeping his place and line from Grosjean), which is fair enough. There are parallels with Valencia though, where Grosjean passed him earlier in the race but he would not yield to Maldonado in the same situation (probably as it was the team that put him in that situation via a pit screw up). Here he was trying to keep the maximum available, given that he had been handicapped already.

    You can see Alonso has been more careful since Silverstone 2010, where he was unlucky to lose a haul of points in that race due to a questionable overtake on Kubica (my view – don’t lay down driveable areas near the kerbs and then people won’t take advantage of them). The point being that avoiding incidents with unpredictable drivers (e.g. Vettel & Karthikeyan side swiping him) gains you points a la Alonso, Raikkonen et al. always seem to do. And this consistency can win you the championship, but admittedly it is hard to yield to this when you feel the team is making things harder than it could be.

    I do hope posts remain on the front page and as the other sections fill out and add content they become more prominent too. I do like the style of this blog as well. If the Honeywell rumour is true it is very smart, and I can admire venture capital that does benefit companies as well as make money. I guess they pretty much want to hang on to the Lotus name now, after all the trouble needed to get it! And it does have a cool retro edge to it as a brand, a concept which is always making a comeback nowadays (viva GPL!). Joe Saward previously mentioned the possibility of Gerard Lopez maybe wanting to acquire Lotus in the future if I remember correctly, or was it Tony Fernandes.. We could have Lotus vs Caterham sports cars once more? With Caterham F1 stemming from Lotus F1.. Life’s a circle, lol.

    A comment to rival JoJ! 🙂

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