TJ13 – Page 1218 – F1 Insiders Est. 2012

Lewis being pushed?

September 19, 2012September 17, 2012 by The Judge

The “where will Lewis drive in 2013?” debate has been raging since Eddie Jordan launched the “Mercedes to sign Lewis” story like a grenade between Spa and Monza.

The response of fans and F1 writers has intrigues me. Many are focusing on the pragmatic attitude that no better options to win are open to Lewis so he should stay put. Joe Saward for example saying only Ferrari (27), McLaren (32) and Red Bull (30) have consistently won races since Lewis joined F1; the next best was Brawn (8) who became Mercedes F1 AMG.

From a logical point of view this is incontrovertible. Yet in F1 politics logic doesn’t always prevail. I believe Lewis is being pushed and I’ll explain why.

F1: Breeding ground for road car technology? No chance.

September 19, 2012September 17, 2012 by The Judge

Jean Todt has staked his FIA premiership firmly on this platform. Formula E(lectric) has been announced, one presumes to be associated with F1 and promote economic and efficient cars. I’m sorry, but this will be like watching Tomorrows World of old and pays lip service to the concept of making racing more relevant to 21^st century car manufacture.

Luca de Montezelomo is quite obtuse about these matters. Ferrari are genuinely interested in cost cutting, for the simple reason that most of the money spent in F1 design now in the area of aerodynamics; something that is not relevant to the road cars Ferrari produce.

“We want an F1 with less cost,” Montezemolo said. “Tell me why we have to spend a huge amount of cost to spend 24 hours in the windtunnel to do a small wing flap that for the public [the interest] is zero, for the television is zero, and for me as a road-car manufacturer it is less than zero because we will never use this for the road car?”. Absolutely true.

Why F1 TV missing so much race action

September 19, 2012September 16, 2012 by The Judge

I have found myself increasingly irritated by the FOM TV coverage this year. Too many times the director is following a sterile situation and is missing developing chases and a significant number of overtakes whilst following mundane action.

If you’ve been watching F1 like me for 30 years, you will remember the TV coverage of the 70’s and 80’s being not of a particularly high standard. Partly this was due to the technology and its cost. Another factor was, unlike most mainstream sports that compete in a relatively small an defined space eg a football pitch, an F1 race takes place over several square miles. Add to this cars travelling at speeds in excess of 300km per hour and you have a tricky event to capture on film.

A shrinking race calendar for 2013?

September 28, 2012September 15, 2012 by The Judge

I wrote this last week (15/9/2012) , but am re-publishing today after provisional calendar revealed and other news)

I was contemplating on the way back from Spa Francorchamps, when the 2013 race calendar would be published. Then something I heard in Monza made me even more curious…but we’ll return to that later.

In 2011, the draft calendar for this year was published June 3^rd. It included Istanbul as part of a 21 race schedule. This race was dropped in the final version confirmed in September leaving the 20 races we have now.

However, this year, we’ve not yet heard a whisper regarding a 2013 schedule and the FIA is due to meet next at the end of September. So it’s unlikely they’ll be any news before then.

Rules Damn Rules (Part 1: FIA makes historic changes)

May 10, 2015September 14, 2012 by The Judge

The old maxim, “rules were made to be broken”, has been somewhat ingrained in the DNA of F1 participants since time began.

It appears remarkable to some onlookers that this attitude is almost endemic within F1 teams. To them and others of course the Mclaren spy scandal and Flaviogate are examples of rule breaking that is completely unacceptable. Yet there will always be the run of the mill offences such as speeding in the pit lane, unsafe driving/pit release, blocking and a host of sins that are the ‘yellow card’ offences that we kind of expect.

However, its important not to lose sight of the fact that Formula 1 is a technological and development race every bit as much as a series of motor races, and it is this aspect of the sport that drives the DNA of the teams to develop the cars to the limit of the regulations. Which may be one of the reasons why someone appears to be always breaking the rules, but are the FIA changing the nature of this game?

Jake, F1 and the BBC conundrum

September 19, 2012September 13, 2012 by The Judge

For Jake Humphrey, life couldn’t have been much better for the past few years. His rise has been swift from lowly CBBC presenter to the accomplished F1 anchor on the BBC.

Jake married his childhood sweetheart Harriet in 2007 and Tuesday this week announced they were expecting their first child. His sports reporting/commentary career began as a match reporter for BBC radio in 2005 and also he became the face of American Football for the BBC.

He presented a daily afternoon show from the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and has co-presented 4 times the BBC’s end of year love in that is “Sports personality of the year”.

There was a lot of speculation when Sky landed F1 for 2012 that they desperately tried to persuade Jake to join Martin Brundle in their new venture. The importance of this failed coup has become especially evident when you listen to many people’s opinions on Sky’s anchor, Simon Lazenby. They feel he comes across as an F1 Jonny come lately and consider his style a little stilted and fawning toward the senior figures of the F1 world – in general lacking gravitas unlike Jake.

Hello world!

April 29, 2015September 13, 2012 by The Judge

It’s a rather sad and poignant day to launch my blog. Yet it is a day that demonstrates the awesome power of social media. This incredible power is to communicate to the world, or certainly those connected through social media across the world, news and information within seconds of it happening.

This was evident today when one of the renown F1 journalists tweeted this morning, “so sad to wake and hear about Sid…” of course referring to the death of Professor Sid Watkins. The first tweet I saw regarding Sid’s death was around 21:00 last night. It used to be the case that we the public would only hear about breaking news quite some time following the event. So for millions of F1 fans to have known that Sid had passed on to join Ayrton before a number of people closely connected with the F1 circus – would have been impossible a mere handful of years ago.