New Jersey out, Turkey in?, Schumacher to receive ‘Legend of Sport’ award, and other F1 News and comment

Great to see contributors coming up with news I’ve not yet found. Thanks to madmax for this one (23:36 18/10/12).  By the way madmax, you gave us this about 7 hours before the mainstream media reported it. Probably something to do with my permanent state of insomnia too.

New Jersey: Unlike most new circuits who run the approval gauntlet with Mr. E, it appears New Jersey have declined to participate in the 2013 calendar. “The race, scheduled for June 16, 2013, will be pushed back a year in order for track organizers to finish the permitting process needed to complete the 3.2-mile road course along the Hudson River in Weehawken and West New York, N.J. Among other things, track officials are waiting approval from Corps of Engineers to take control of property along the Hudson River where grandstands will be erected” (Speed).

11:40 (19/12) Interesting that Mr. E isn’t saying the usual stuff about no money, in fighting or contractual matters being the problem. They just ran out of time to get everything organised” (Reuters). Interesting how in the developing world the legalities of Health and Safety and a whole host of other bureaucratic red tape don’t affect a new venue as much as in Western Society.

The judge13 did suggest in “A shrinking calendar for 2013” (link – published Sept 15) that, “unless some real sweetheart deals are done, and that 2013 will could well have fewer races than 2012”. Ecclestone’s problem is he can’t be seen to letting his grasp slip on the calendar; particularly as he has negotiated with the teams that they will participate in up to 23 races each season. On this basis to keep the momentum it must be highly likely Turkey, a track owned by Ecclestone and co., will make a return to the calendar. This is one of the better Tilke venues and has always provided a race that’s no procession.

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Mallya charges dropped, but problems just beginning, Sir Jack Stewart talks sexy (Ugh), F1 opportunity for Porsche, F1 News and Links…

Mallya: Boss of stricken Kingfisher Airlines – has bounced cheque charges dropped (business today), and has paid off his arrears on the airport fees – presumably because he has raised some cash from selling a chunk of United Spirits to Diageo  (Mallya forced to sell). Before the champagne (Crystal we think) is cracked this may just be the beginning of Vijay’s problems, because everyone else who is owed money should have realised the way to get paid is to issue legal proceedings. Indian tax authorities who have not received the deducted tax deducted Kingfisher Airlines from their employees are beginning action – it may be some employees are technically liable themselves even thought the Mallya company has taken the money from them. (Economic Times). The Indian courts may find themselves very busy soon particularly if the author of “Is Vijay Mallya India’s worst businessman” is correct. (firstpost.com)

Mercedes: After being heavily criticised by Helmut Marco for recruiting 3 former team technical directors to head up sub-divisions of Mercedes F1 (link), it appears Ross Brawn has decided that he has enough his search for “art directors” and is looking for some “Indians” – less expensive candidates. Here is a link if you are an undergraduate and interested in taking a 1 year placement with the team. (Merc Grad Recruit). To be fair, an amazing opportunity.

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Mallya forced to relinquish Control, Ecclestone U-turn, Tooned Cancelled, Sky F1 reporting gets even worse

London GP: Ecclestone says the race is off that was never on. London – city or Olympic Park http://www.cityam.com/sport/central-london-grand-prix-says-ecclestone. I love how he then goes to great lengths to explain why it would be cost efficient and a great idea though. Maybe this undying enthusiasm for pointless ideas and lost causes is how Mokpo not Seoul ended up with the Korean GP (South Korea, Ecclestone and The Emporer’s New Clothes)

Tooned: is cancelled due to Lewis leaving the team – so for the rest of this year at least. Would love to see it return with Jenson and Perez next year. Perez character could be based on being a relative of my childhood favourite cartoon, Speedy Gonzales, a very very fast mexican mouse. For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure…(YouTube). If you enjoyed that and want a free box set worth of them…(YouTube). More importantly Tooned is a way of attracting kids interest in F1 and was a good idea. I think they should just do a best mates breakup story about Lewis and Jenson anyway. My best mate aged 22 didn’t speak to me for a year – its life.

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Monday Post Korea Blues: Mercedes woeful slide continues, BBC story panics Red Bull and more…

Funny how from week to week the Monday morning feeling following and F1 weekend can be quite different. With Japan and Korea being back to back the contrast is stark. Last Monday, I was still buzzing from the Japanese GP. not that the battle for the win was great, but there was a lot of good racing down the pack, the fans were amazing, Kamui getting his podium at last before he loses his F1 seat, Grosjean’s latest incident…lots of stuff to think about and write about.

Today…Zzz…I’m struggling. Part of the reason is I think my post race thoughts posted yesterday for Korea was more comprehensive than the one from Japan, so there are fewer loose ends to tie up today. Another the reason is that the F1 circus is battling its way back from the remote part of S. Korea and today is a quiet news days. Any way let’s see what’s going on.

BBC – Old News and Wrong News

You can spot quiet news days, for example, today the BBC F1 story is a re-hash of something we have known about for months – Vettel/Ferrari possibly/maybe 2014. Even so, someone at Red Bull just told me the team have been forced into action and brought forward their post race debrief from Tuesday to today 3:30pm – to quash the rumours.

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Arrest warrant for Mallya, McLaren secret new DDRS, BBC evicts thejudge13, and more coming soon

F1 News, Fun links and comment

  1. 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.
  2. 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)
  3. 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.

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Gangnam Style banned by Ecclestone, Marko dismisses “Lord Lauda”, Cracks in Ferrari unity….and other stuff…

Its Thursday before race weekend, lots going on so today is bite sized links to the less reported comments with a few wry comments from me.

  1. Psy – the Korean pop star with one off world wide hit “Gangnum Style” is going to wave the chequered flag on Sunday. Yes I know this was announced yesterday but celebrities waving the chequered flag does not always work too well. Ask Pele about Brazil 2002. (YouTube link). For those of you without video capabilities, When Pele was asked to wave the chequered flag at the Brazilian Grand Prix it seemed a perfect PR opportunity, the country’s, if not the world’s, greatest footballer at one of its biggest sporting events. And, to be fair, it is not exactly a task burdened by onerous or complex rules. But, it seemed the organisers appeared to fail to explain the intricacies of Formula One to the great man, so when Michael Schumacher crossed the line to take the victory, followed home by brother Ralf, Pele was busy chatting with officials and forgot to show them the flag. Alerted to his mistake, he enthusiastically waved the flag at the next driver past, which happened to be Takuma Sato who was some two laps behind the winner, meaning technically he had won the race. “Pele is very little,” noted Schumacher. “I didn’t see the flag though, that’s the only thing I noticed.”
  2. Talking of Psy, whether he is a one hit wonder or not, he his HOT HOT HOT at the moment. The promoters of the Korean GP had a spoof video made with the “Gangnam style” soundtrack behind track workers dancing and clips of F1 action at the circuit. It was posted on YouTube and the video went viral worldwide. Of course FOM and Bernie’s lawyers spotted it and told YouTube to take it down as it was showing clips of copyright material. This morning my daughter who knows I’m connected to F1 but she shows no other interest in the sport – she asked me out of the blue, “Daddy where can we see the Gangnam video with your racing cars?” Trying to attract the youth to F1 Mr E? – FAIL!!!

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Lauda to sack Brackley personnel, Nascar mother of all pile ups, Lola closes doors, Tooned will be ‘racey’

After battling with F1 and global finance until gone midnight on “Ecclestone to load a mountain of debt on F1“, then the day so far has been spent with lawyers – so we’ll start with a News Links post and see if I’ve got enough time and energy for an in depth article later. (Anything in wite on this page is a URL link to the original or pic or video).

Quick thanks to someone on German site MotorsportTotal.com who posted a link to thejudge13 and we’ve had over 50 new German visitors today from their site. Great work.

  1. Last week I did a couple of articles on Niki Lauda, suggesting there may be fireworks at Merceds F1 now he’s the big boss (a position he couldn’t help refering to on TV at the weekend I noticed). Niki’s inability to “suffer fools gladly” is legendary. So today, our favourite German publication Bilde has the following, “Schumi’s car builders are fired”. (I always put the link to prove the source, but be careful with any translation software – particularly verb tenses). Anyway Christian Danner RTL expert pundit and ex F1 driver of note (I’ll come back to this) says today that Niki Lauda needs to fire the designers of this years car. He suggests that after 9 months the car is performing like a Torro Rosso and heads must roll. He urges Niki the hatchetman on, “He is responsible to make the next decision. And the next decisions will be primarily personnel decisions”. RTL commentator Danner, a little bit like Mr. J Herbert for SKY, drove in Formula 1 over 4 years. 2 of those he was not classified with any points and had a career best P4 in USA 1989 when he also had his best season scoring a total of 4 points. WATCH OUT ROSS

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Jenson says, “I love Sombreros’, Kimi on Sushi – ‘tastes like raw fish’, Pic future uncertain, Lewis goes wrong way on qualy setup

Race weekend and its time for quick news and links. In depth articles back next week. Since signing for Mercedes, Lewis has reportedly been asking quite a lot of technical questions of team garage members about important aspects of the McLaren design of the car he drives…… 4 Wheels – check, steering wheel – check, … Read more

Montreal promoters go bust, Schumacher gives Mercedes 5 mins warning, Perez must stop fibbing, Kingfisher employee family suicide

It’s race weekend, and for those of you who have only joined us since Singapore, thejudge13, is often a little quieter over race weekends – as the focus of the F1 world is on reporting breaking news – who said what to who – who was fastest in which session, so Friday (or is it now Saturday in Japan) before a race is a good time to try to tie up any loose ends that are worthy of note, but not a full article.

A bit of housekeeping first.

Please, please leave comments to the articles, even if you think I’m talking rubbish – tell me. I’ve only had to moderate 1 comment so far for use of the f-word – it still got published but with “[mod]” replacing the offending  euphemism.

Also, if you enjoy thejudge13 follow us. This will help us further down the line get live F1 twitter/site guests to come and debate with us and answer our questions. You can follow on twitter and/or email. The buttons on the  vertical bar to the right of the screen. If you click for email, you will ONLY receive email when a new article is first published. Retweets and favourites are very good for getting us ranked higher in the busy twitter #F1.

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Nicole kisses Chris, Thai GP announced, Mercedes not yet seen Concorde? Ecclestone offers cash to settle bribe claims, Mr. E Wants Australia at night

Well,  2 weeks since the launch of the blog – over 3000 hits and some very complimentary comments. I’ve quickly learned in social media though, you need a thick skin as some comments are not just au contraire but pretty abusive. Hey Ho.

Its not been too bad so far. We called the Jake leaving the BBC the week before it was announced and suggested in the “Shrinking Calendar” piece there may be trouble yet for New Jersey (You can see the date published on each article)

Well today was the day that wasn’t. We’ve had an FIA executive meeting with no news, a Mercedes car company board meeting with no news and the much awaited Eddie Jordan prediction was also – no news.

So here’s some links to a few things that have occurred.

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