47 responses to “Red Bull Highly Secretive, Perez quickest in Barcelona testing, UPS partner Ferrari, Experian sponsor Williams, 2013 F1 tyre degradation is much higher than in 2012”

1. Two things struck me today in relation to Alonso/Ferrari:
   – Alonso was planning to do 100 laps a day in Barcelona but only managed to do 76 laps today, so something must have gone wrong or at least not fully according to plan, and it seems to be another exhaust issue: another sign that the F138 is suffering a structural overheating issue?
   – A striking resemblance in the Ferrari drivers’ first impression of the new car: ‘I’m not too disappointed’ said Massa, and Alonso sait ‘it is ok’. Are they being instructed to avoid any upbeat comments?

2. it sounds very strange to me that Ferrari have not known the overheating issue… this should have been tested and evaluated before the proper tests and even before the car launch.
   Are we going for a remake of 2012 with FA losing the crown for a few pennies ?

   • You need to test in the real airflow, on track or equivalent, but then the cooling required will vary with each engine setting for mixture, injector and spark timing. Then it varies with altitude, drag etc. So it must be difficult to get it right first time. The there’s the cooling for Kers “battery” and the Kers cabling, then the oil, the CPU will also produce lots of heat.

     • Its not quite as bad as Lotus who tried to Fry Heidfeld alive in testing (I think) a couple of years ago.

3. My reading is that the McLaren will be very strong this year…

   • It’s looking good for Mr. Button at present with the tyre situation I methinks

4. I’m rather disappointed to see Experian’s logo on a Williams.

   Experian and the credit rating crowd are not what I would consider nice businesses. The very antithesis of racing, or at least wheeling and dealing, the nice and not (too) dubious kind of which is the origin of the privateer teams I grew up egging on. I am not saying they re not a “necessary evil”, but that they wield disproportionate power, and act with contempt as befits their position.

   Not that most large businesses act without contempt and arrogance towards their customers, as that’s sadly human nature.

   So speaks a guy who keeps a squeaky clean credit rating without ever having borrowed a red cent, and who once initiated libel proceedings against all the major credit rating agencies over a false report.

   (That went away, fast, but I wish I had deeper pockets to try these cases for the principle. I guess I hold the contrary position of both being in business, and abhorring the attitude of most business. The factor is human nature. The lowliest secretary will act with contempt if he or she thinks they can and will be endorsed by management implicitly or explicitly, or just in their own imagination. )

   LOL, I hope Experian pay on time!

   • Hang on, which team ran on a Thursday or a Friday with a sticker calling out a sponsor who’d not paid? Was it Arrows, or Jordan? .. Anyone?

   • Aha – and that is what most people think – if you don’t borrow that you have a good rating. Nope – sorry. Some people who’ve never borrowed find it harder to get credit than people who have and also have a repayment record. – The world is crazy I know.

     Let’s have a whip round and get TJ13 logo on a car 🙂

     • One’s credit rating, so I’m told, is (unsurprisingly) not for YOUR benefit – it’s for the benefit of the lender…in the sense that the higher the credit rating the better you are commercially for the lender. Anyone who, for example, always pays off their entire credit card bill every month is BAD commercially – no profit – and thus may well have a lower credit rating than someone who runs a balance but is reliable in keeping it under control.

       I’m not a banker so this is just my opinion and not to be relied upon for anyone’s financial planning 😉

       • Ahh, hmmmm, I don’t know if it’s better than my dad turning you down for a mortgage if he didn’t like how you kept house. Try this: ca. 1936, only building societies can lend a mortgage. They’re from the North, you know . . . my dad got exiled to the south. Where nobody operated below about London on the map.

         • That’s because the Northerners had no cash like the evil southerners, so they invented ‘leverage’ as a way of raising capital to raise an army of mercenaries that would take back their birth right from those in the south… I feel another, ‘In an alternate universe…’ coming on.

       • Another one, Tim: who asked for the SEC to be formed?

         . . . da da dum! . . The banks . .

         whilst we’re at it and this is a old one I trot out: who put the word “bank” in bankrupt? Coincidence, no?

         • I’ve been ‘banking’ on someone pointing that out for quite some time 😉

       • Hi Tim – and you are spot on.

         Welcome and feel free to chip in whenever you like.

         RBS or Lloyds?

     • Erm, TJ, I have a printout from the very firm I am slagging saying I am just fine, 98/100 and I don’t borrow . . so at least for one occasion, and I know it’s rare, not true.

       Please don’t dob me in now! 🙂

       • That was of course before I started posting on this forum. You do know they use such data .. 🙂

         (actually, they do, seriously, they do)

       • Unusual score. Usually around 5-700. Still won’t tell

         • having said that – those scores I mentioned are with another company.

           Seems like there’s a competition going on. 1 business gives you a max of 100 whilst another will give you 700 as a perfect score.

         • This is what I read once but it may be incorrect or out of date. If memory serves correctly, Equifax are the one the banks use for things like credits cards, loans etc, whereas Experian are used more by the high street for things like hire purchase, phone contracts etc.

           I place a higher value on my Equifax score as I consider it more important then Experian (in my experience anyway).

           Of course I could have it the wrong way round, it’s been a long day and I’ve had a few drinks tonight 😉

         • Experian only go up to 100. Might just have outed your nationality, there, TJ 🙂

           Chris, you’re right, Equifax count for a lot more. Just haven’t got a recent check on mine with them. Should probably take a look. Twice removed – so this is hearsay not a allegation, but I believed it and still do, know of some horror stories if you upset Equifax. One from a senior programmer of a company they acquired. He quit on moral grounds, headed to the States, and found his name was mud. Lived on sofas, was cut off from the banking system entirely. Had to sue his way to normal living. The impression I got from the story teller was it was payback. Could be a tall story, could be bureaucratic cock up. But your call on Equifax as more important is top advice regardless.

           I grew up with my father’s stories of how he’d assess credit worthiness. It was worthy of film noir PI scripts. He’d tell me how he could spot signs of impending divorce and all sorts of things from tell tale clues. Before we had the scoring systems, you had guys like my dad, snooping about your life. So it’s not surprising to me, that everything from Facebook data to your cellular phone calling patterns are used today as indicators. As a boy I found my dad’s stories creepy, repellent, and all too early developed a rebellious streak. It affected me in that I consciously ignored many adverse signals socially for a long while. Got myself in the wrong company more than once. But my dad was good. He turned down the top job at his thrift. I consider that a endorsement of the man’s skills. He was 30 years ahead of the demutualisation proposition, nearly got blackballed as a result of a conference speech. When he started campaigning at the plundering of “over funded” pensions, they offered to bring the actual board to meet him at our home (still keep all those letters).

           All those observations I grew up having explained to me are a kind of curse. Very very useful in business. (though it is only recently I accepted that as useful, being a blue sky dreamer for significant parts of my life.

           The curse is I can sometimes cut through all socially accepted norms and tear someone up with observations which can be painful. I’m no psychic, but if you grow up with a even then almost elderly father, he retired before I was born, pumping you full of experiences (some of which became his plays and novels) you inevitably end up with a store of observations on which to draw.

           The second aspect of the curse, is that you sometimes really don’t want to know so much about yourself, either. It’s not that unusual, but having a constantly running background process introspecting everything you do, leads to the occasional awkward pause, as the dried bushes roll past the dusty main street in the wind.

           The third curse is when you tear in to someone important to you. One day I’ll get around to writing about all this properly. I’ve made some very good friends by being able to gently observe the pressures they’re under. And lost a true love by breaking the fourth wall of life.

           I don’t read much SF if at all, but studied AI for some years, not consciously knowing at the time that that obviously is coincident with my early experience. (getting one’s hands on Douglas Hofstadter’s books too young is cool at the time, but has potentially scary implications in ow one grows up!) I write so much, not because it’s the only outlet – if I’m not in conversation in real life I’m probably unwell – because of a fascination with how we understand the world. I’m sue I would have been much the same without, but the internet is a superb medium that I try daily to understand how we can use it better.

           Where was I? Oh, I think my point was about privacy. I am very against invasive technology in personal life (I think most people would be shocked at how pervasive things are*), but in the context of banking and credit, I don’t think we’re examined so differently from how we were in the past. I know someone, for example, who is or was trying to sell to banks ways to analyse vocabularies and even moods from things like Facebook comments, as a indicator for when a loan should be called in. He’s certainly not the only one. Some early proponents of digital life liked the idea of a “global village”. I grew up in a small town, here you couldn’t do much that was not soon known. In a way, the invasive properties, or the potential hereof, of technology and just modern twitching lace curtains. But the problem is that with such a wide field, the incentives to act in psychopathic or plain unsociable ways have been multiplied by the size of the village. They’re so large a opportunity now, you need to get organised to exploit them. Form a company. When psychologists and clinical psychiatric study indicate a high degree of psychopathic behavior in successful businessmen, they are not identifying a new phenomenon. But the studies are always interpreted as a diagnosis of individuals, and not properly couched in terms of systemic effects observed versus individual behavior without the observed system.

           Sorry guys and girls, here’s not really the place for such thought, but I thought to touch on the subject just once, because we’re in for interesting times, as we look at what’s going on in our favorite sport, and I expect we will see the unraveling of some very complex characters and their expressions of their character in life and racing, this year. The few times I’ve made fairly okay predictions, I’m relying on m,y study of the people involved, not inside knowledge, and I’m as far away from the paddock as can be imagined. But I hope I can shed some light on a few aspects, as I perambulate the boundaries. I hope I can deliver something written of interest time to time.

           *try “secure” webmail. that little secure padlock sign, or green band saying you are on a encrypted connexion, well what makes that “secure” is a aster key (glossing details) that can sign less important keys that can make a clear intercept of your, in your imagination, secure sending of email. If you’re a business with a accepted “clean pair of hands” you don’t block employees from logging on to web email, because that won’t stop someone determined from sending sensitive data, they could just use their phone to capture the screen . . Instead you get a key to decrypt what is being sent. This is rare, but much more common than you might think. Same goes for cellular phones. Just have a local access point, and the right gift from higher authority, and you’ll have a log of what people are doing. It’s actually necessary, this approach, for many big businesses. So very few projects can be Skunk Works style, complete lock down, but so much of value streams out across the ether all the time.

           Just on a personal note, as befits someone whose uncle was a director of the War Office, I am pragmatic about the balance of invasive powers. But just as if someone picks a supposedly “unpickable” lock, disproving a false claim to the person who buys it who trusts in that security, I believe we should all think harder. I would love, for example, to lock down my home like Fort Knox, but if I wasn’t here, and my octogenarian mother had a emergency, there would be no way to get to her. Okay, I’m solving that will fail safe doors, and a external intercom to the alarm company, who can release the latch, but that is still not unhackable, because you could socially engineer access. In fact all I am doing is upgrading to the same safety as many neighbors have, which is not really a lot, but if a delay was caused if my mother was in emergency, that would haunt my every reincarnation, if reincarnation is a thing. Just having the same home security as is normal for my neighborhood raised all these issues. It’s a balance, I rely more on my neighbors for social security, and now we somewhat neatly return to the village analogy. I did grow up in a town where locking doors was not necessary, and still feel the change from that time.

           The trust but verify approach is a good one. Maybe in another expression of the idea, it could be a watch word for TJ13. Everyone here seems a inquisitive mind, and has much to offer. I am all for a little more vigilance in our sporting passion.

         • I thought I’d made my nationality perfectly clear in the past

           http://youtu.be/nlRl5V7lgs4

         • Very interesting post, JoJ. I remember reading Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach” many years ago and it was so good it blew me away, especially as two of my heroes are Gödel and Bach 🙂

           I also have a very big interest in AI and my degree thesis was very AI influenced.

           Also, your points about privacy are spot on. Read an essay only a week or so ago about how the new internet fad for “personalisation” on websites has a very dark side indeed.

   • I agree, but it’s still better than seeing companies like Wonga.com and other “loan sharks” that we see on football shirts these days…

     • Wonga is a interesting case study. Their max APR is actually only if you keep rolling over a loan, and it’s structured as a balloon payment, i.e. you pay interest on interest. Hence the insanely high APR of something like 14,000 percent.

       I’ve looked at their website, and they are absolutely clear as to what you are getting into.

       Funny thing, not only was my father a mortgage banker, but on my mothers side (my parents met through work, also) she had aunt who was a unregulated money lender. This is long before there was much if any regulation, mum was born 1931, and said aunt was elderly when mum grew up. My mum’s first job, as a very little girl was reclaiming the beer bottles from off sales from the family pub. Because they wee a deposit. She can tell you stories how people clung to them because they wee too poor to own a candle stick, the bottle substituting.

       By nature I am very against the existence of companies like Wonga. But they have a simple proposition: immediacy and that is coupled with a lack of moral judgement and a good deal of clarity. A friend was stranded a few weeks ago, mugged for the lot, out of town, no gas in his car, right nightmare, and either could reach his bank, nor had help. But he ha one debit card in his glove compartment. He walked into a internet cafe, and got bailed out by a loan from Wonga.

       Now I wish my pal had thought to call collect to me, but he’s proud, and was in shock anyhow. When I say proud, I mean it. He’s had a rotten steak, lost his home. I had gotten him leave to reenter in court, when no solicitor would touch it, thinking a lost case. Then he was evicted anyhow against the order, and was too embarrassed to call me. (very sad situation with his parents explains the financial problems) So I mean he is really proud. I found him one morning camped on my doorstep – he’s not knocked because he didn’t want to wake me, and he’s a good friend, I’d never turn him away.

       Anyhow, he got a loan, got his arse in gear, paid it back in a few days. The interest was far more modest. Still a very very high rate, but he basically was charged 20 quid to get him out of a fix. I think that in balance was a fair deal.

       The real problem is that so few are taught about money and finance young enough that it sinks in. I’ve read many studies that suggest by our 20s habits are very strongly ingrained. The other day I think one of the Tory ministers was proposing elementary finance be a required school subject. In m mum’s day is was “home economics”.

       So I’m equanimous as to these companies, or at least Wonga. At least until further study.

       I think they are allowed because they are a alternative to the door step lender, synonymous with not only the potential of violent threats and unscrupulousness, but of social opprobrium as the neighbors spot the collector. I’ve not followed up, but my friend said he was suddenly on the end of tons of spam, and I wonder if his credit rating will not be affected longer term now. Incidentally, though he lost his home, my fried is now looking after his very unwell parents, practically rebuilt their decrepit home on his own, found a good woman, landed on his feet. It’s the only “made good” story I’ve got, so I like to tell it, I guess. But hmm, the fact that a council will evict despite court order they may not, makes me seethe.

       There’s now I think three generations alive who have never been exposed to true poverty. I mean having no food on the table, or in the house, not hope of work, as my father’s family were reduced to by tragedy, a single parent family, reliant on mother, in a age when that meant you were outcast. Please forgive my lengthy comments on this or related subjects. It’s because though this is not the audience for basic financial advice, I feel a moral duty to speak up any time I can illustrate something of use, because of the history that brought me into this world.

       I think Experian is simply not who I’d want as a sponsor. I’m biased by my own history, and by many other factors. True, they perform a ole in bsuiess and in many lives. (I typo’d “business” but spell check told me I mean “obsequies” which are funeral rites. How apt . . ) but they are not selling something of basic value to a person. I think it the most inappropriate sponsorship to take. F1 is as much as we intrigue about it, directness, the reality of results, of ambition, hope and dreams, of the vitality of people wanting to thrive. I genuinely think Experian is leeching from this spirit, wanting to argue they are a functional ad even moreso integral part of our human aspirations, and I’m sorry, but they are not. My estimation of Williams is actually reduced, and they are my most favorite of teams.

       I could go on and on, how lending should and could and can work, or the Swedish bank opening branches all across small communities in England, operating on more personal values than credit score and faceless “not customer facing” actuarial decision fiddlers. Such mechanical proclamations of a person’s honesty may be a function of secular society’s abandonment of values in small business and understanding who you deal with, or it may be a accelerator thereof, or even a blower of cold winds in individual lives. But any which way, I would rather not see them on a racing car. Can anyone argue why seeing their logo makes you – even hypothetically – want to go use their services. Or why using their services brings you something you need in his life. (as Chris notes above, other firms are more important, if you need to know) . I think it’s brand devaluation. I think Adam Parr would not have made that deal.

       • I see what you’re saying and I can’t deny that Wonga and others provide a service. My gripe with them (i’ve never used them myself by the way) is that they appear to prey on people who have no concept of interest rates (particularly compound interest) and therefore people who use their services don’t really know what they’re getting into. One could of course argue that that is their fault, not the fault of the lenders. Even so, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

         • Bernie’s pulled the same trick with his compound interest 7% escalator.

         • Yup, Chris, spot on again.

           Here’s the plays with just one advert:

           – old dears == stability
           – old dears are a fall back as the easy tough in a family
           – old dears are supposed to be trustworthy with money*
           – if your granny can do it, it must be simple
           – marketing to old dears with old dears as characters
           – animated wold with associated belief suspense as in cartoon
           – (note the use of cartoons for utilities or banks who are TBH out of order in their habits)
           – the insidious but blatant repetition of ease of access combined with control
           – clap our hand, all together punchlines to all adverts, like a “APPLAUSE” card to a “live” studio audience.
           – bonus, because the pitch is voiced by seniors, the ingrate viewer thinks they are getting a easy sniff of a granny’s wallet.

           That’s just off the top of my head. I do think it that insidious.

           They might as well be speaking gobbledygook for all your punter cares for numbers.

           Old saying in business, or that when it’s about when hey get the money, the game is over.

           Definitely repulsive, but “good” advertising.

           My view is that the options have historically been worse, but I did not mean endorsement by that observation. I myself have zero tolerance for debt, but have been on my uppers scarily a few times. How does the mentality change when there’s a easy bail out every time? That’s even scarier. I actually know someone who was almost violent to me when I pointed out that his housing association’s offer of 5 grand to move to a much better and newly refurbed flat two doors away. Market rent would be far far beyond what the guy could earn in total gross. Would strap most people. Violent like he had a hard deal, that and vile invented pseudo-moral personal foulness. Don’t see him any more. But albeit very Daily Mail, that’s what you get when there’s always a easy way out and the slackers have a vote.

           I’ll extrapolate that, and say that in my loony right wing fantasy, I would disallow any lending to who is subsidized by the state. No, profiting off who is backstopped and underwritten by society is profiting from society.

           So glad my pal got home safely, that he had the option, but he stands on his own two feet, despite he took a sore blow.

   • “I’m rather disappointed to see Experian’s logo on a Williams.”
     However it would be absolutely hilarious to see it on a Force India. 🙂

     Beware betting companies, I speak as one who still holds some BTX, one of those pioneers in online betting run out of town by US hypocrisy Inc. For my sins I also hold some WGP.

     • Maybe Ferrari could link up with an old Chicago based chain of Laundromats?

       • Rpaco knows his Cuccia from his Curia . .

     • I’ve a sales lead for VJ: http://www.kroll.com/

5. 2001 Arrows With Eurobet Logos 🙂

   • Thanks, Bryan, nice call!

     • Tried to find a pic of this – but can’t I’m afraid.

       • http://www.crash.net/f1/news/40537/1/arrows_take_legal_action_against_coral.html

6. Hi, firstly like to say the website is brilliant. Working for Randstad i couldn’t help but notice above the Williams garage, in big as possible letters is ADECCO.

   • Hi Jamie – Welcome – don’t think we’ve spoken before.

     Keep pitching into the conversation. T think the crew here realise nobody knows everything about F1 and anyway everyone’s opinion is fine too.

     Do you get any F1 jollies as a Ranstaad employee?

     • Hi, got to go the Williams factory once, there was a staff competition to set a quick lap on a computer game, the top 10 got to go, i’m came 6th, its was good.But I thought the fan Forum that JA arranged i went to was better, spent a while talking to Luca (ex Ferrari press guy) he’s really interesting. My f1 knowledge is pretty good, been watching it for 20 years and not missed a race or qually that i can remember. Got a quite a good eye for it too, stung the bookies a few times, best being when i bet on Button for the WDC at over 100/1.

       • I stung the bookies that year too, but got nowhere near as good odds on Button as you did. Well done!!

         • Think we got ourselves a couple of gaming experts here. We’ll ask you for your smart money tips on race weekends – or any special bets we can place…

         • Last year wasn’t quite so good though, I layed Vettel (that is I bet on him to lose the WDC). Unfortunately it was me that lost 🙁

       • Sounds like fun, I usually put a bet on Alonso each way, but after last years performance you can only get 3/1, he could be driving my wheelie bin and I still think you’d get no odds

7. As some one who works in graphics, that UPS logo on the ferrari is upsetting, they should clearly have gone to Lotus… *shakes head*

   • I’m so with you on this one, the UPS-brown and the Ferrari-red are a very bad marriage

   • Love it…great call. Maybe Ferrari could have Postman Pat?

8. Red Bull have come very close to breaking the regs at races in their bid for secrecy. The sporting regs say, amongst lots of stuff, this:

   27.4 During the entire Event, no screen, cover or other obstruction which in any way obscures any part of a car will be allowed at any time in the paddock, garages, pit lane or grid, unless it is clear any such covers are needed solely for mechanical reasons, which could, for example, include protecting against fire.
   In addition to the above the following are specifically not permitted :
   a) Engine, gearbox or radiator covers whilst engines are being changed or moved around the garage.
   b) Covers over spare wings when they are on a stand in the pit lane not being used.
   c) Parts such as (but not limited to) spare floors, fuel rigs or tool trolleys may not be used as an obstruction

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