FUJI TV Loses right to direct Japanese GP

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I wasn’t going to write an article today, but I’d forgotten I meant to develop one further written a couple of weeks ago.

As is the secretive nature of all things Bernie/FOM many people don’t under stand much about how we view a Formula 1 weekend.

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.

Yet these were not only the issues back in the day… Each race was covered by the different countries’ resident TV channels. They were called the ‘host broadcasters’ and naturally if you only cover a sporting event once a year, the specialisation that comes with doing something frequently was missing and the quality of TV production varied greatly from country to country.

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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

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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

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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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Schumacher Retires – Really?

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So Michael announces his retirement in Suzuka. Adam Cooper has the full and rather emotional speech here, so I won’t publish it all. What surprises me is that Schumacher has been driving pretty well this year, here’s some head to heads

Head to Head – Schumacher/Rosberg/Massa

Ave grid position                     Ave qualifying time outside poll position

7.5     Schmacher                    0.936secs    Schumacher

8.5     Rosberg                         1.145secs    Rosberg

10.8   Massa                            1.095secs    Massa

Ave finish position                 Head to head qualifying

7.1      Schumacher                Schumacher/Massa       10 to 4

8.1      Rosberg                       Schumacher/Rosberg    8   to 6

9.8      Massa

Finished ahead of (completed races)

Schumacher/Massa        3 to 4

Schumacher/Rosberg     6 to 1

People have criticised Schumacher for not finishing enough races, 7 in fact, but If you consider the list of problems Schumacher has had, his contribution has been minimal (in bold)

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Whitmarsh: It was all about the money

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James Allen reports Martin Whitmarsh speaking today at a Vodafone phone in (say that after a few drinks) when discussed his feelings over losing Lewis Hamilton, his lack of regrets on the matter and the matter of Ferrari’s complaint to the FIA of the McLaren front wing being too flexible.

On the matter of Hamilton and sans regret, Whitmarsh words are, “The offer that we made was higher I believe than any driver in Formula 1 is currently receiving or will receive next year.”

Ok, thanks Martin that’s all cleared that up then… or does it?

I’ve read this carefully constructed sentiment a number of times over the past week and Whitmarsh has repeated it on a number of different occasions, not a single occasion merely reported differently by different sources.

“We made a very, very big financial offer, bigger than I believe any Formula One driver is enjoying today,” (Reuters)

And in a different interview reported in the Mail,

“‘We made a financial offer which is better than anyone in Formula One, other than Lewis himself, receives today, and that is something I am comfortable with.” (Daily Mail)

I try at times to resist my instincts, but after a semester of textual and literary criticism that has never been fruitfully employed in over 20 years, it’s time to dust off the text books.

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How Lauda got the top job in Mercedes F1

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It’s the old tale of ‘not what you know, but who you know’ that matters in life. I was extremely puzzled when I read about Niki Lauda’s involvement in mediating between Mr. Bernie Ecclestone and the board of Daimler Benz.

As I’ve previously documented, Daimler and Ecclestone were at loggerheads following the draft Concorde agreement as published before the start of this season. Such that Mercedes the car manufacturer was seriously threatening to pull out of F1 for good, or until Ecclestone was gone. (link)

Ecclestone in turn dismissed them as having “done nothing in F1” which poisoned the chalice further.

Such was the heated animosity between the parties you would think it was time to call upon one of history’s enigmatic peacemakers; one who had attained Alfred Nobel’s greatest honour; the like of Mother Theresa or Mahatma Gandhi.

As these 2 are unfortunately no longer with us, we must look to the land of the living and would probably settle on someone with the political nuance of Kofi Annan and the humility and wisdom of the Dalai Lama.

Enter the dragon’s den – Niki Lauda!

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Lauda: Ross Brawn’s new boss

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In the last thejudge13 article, ‘Schauber or Ferrari’ we looked at how successful Michael has actually been this year, and why it would be very strange for him to quit driving now. It was this that puzzled me most during the breaking story from Eddie Jordan about Hamilton moving to Mercedes.

Surely after coming out of retirement and investing his wealth of experience to the development of the fledging Mercedes works team, why would he step aside for Hamilton, and surely after all the years together, Ross Brawn wouldn’t push him out. It was also reported the consolation for Michael was that he was to be offered a job in the senior management of the team.

But why has Schumacher been left out in the cold? James Allen has written an excellent piece today, which in brief suggests Schumacher just missed the boat. (link) James argues that Michael Schumacher felt his position was secure enough to delay decisions until October before making a commitment, and the Hamilton events simply overtook Schumacher’s timetable.

I seem to remember there being some talk in the summer of Michael being offered a 1 year contract by Mercedes taking them up to the new engine launch in 2014. Allegedly, Schumacher wanted 2 years to reap any benefits many expect the team to have from the new technology. Maybe it was this negotiation point that cost Schumacher his seat.

We then heard over the weekend that Niki Lauda has been given an ambassadorial role with Mercedes AMG F1. No mention again of Schumacher which appeared a little strange.

Tomorrow morning, Bild (A German newspaper) is running an article entitled, “Off with Schumacher, on with the Lauda cap”. I guess the headline looses a little in translation, but to many of us the rapid escalation of Niki Lauda’s profile during the last week has come somewhat from ‘left field’ – a sporting Americanism that means ‘has come from nowhere’. Enough of the translations and onwards and upwards.

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Schauber or Ferrari? Schumacher’s options

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Considering the Hamilton and Perez moves were announced practically simultaneously, the mystery surrounding Michael Schumacher’s future remains. As usual picking the bones out of what the different parties say is not easy.

Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm (Bild), suggests Michael had opportunities with Mercedes and “could have been able to sign if he had wanted to earlier in the summer.” So, we are led to believe it is Schumacher’s indecision over whether he wishes to continue driving at all that has forced Mercedes hand in taking advantage of the Hamilton opportunity.

This may have been the case in the end. Michael’s maybe have been holding out for a 2 year deal instead of the 1 year deal Mercedes had on offer and it is this prevarication that has cost him the seat within the team he has been helping to build. But that does not mean he feels he is done with driving in F1.

Strangely there has been no talk of an offer for Michael to join Mercedes management team and they have already made the slightly inexplicable appointment of Niki Lauda last week to the board. It appears as though there is no room at the Mercedes table for the man who has surely helped build this team since Mercedes acquisition.

Suddenly in 2012, he is the fastest driver in Monaco qualifying and has out qualified Rosberg in 8/14 race weekends. He has only finished 7 races, but in 6 of those he finished ahead of Rosberg (Bahrain being the exception). His average time behind the pole time is (0.936 secs) against NR (1.145secs) and he has also qualified on average 7th and Rosberg has managed 8th.

So without a couple of crashes and some poor pit work meaning a lost tyre and without the numerous gearbox failures, Schumacher would be close if not ahead of Rosberg in the championship and that would be a big story.

Suggesting that Michael may want to retire again would have been more credible after year 2 of his comeback when he clearly struggled get to grips with the driving style required to maximise the off throttle engine blowing that dominated car design. But now?

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Hamilton: The tipping point for Whitmarsh

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It appears Martin Whitmarsh days may be numbered as Team Principle of McLaren Racing.

First a brief background of Martin and McLaren: He studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic attaining a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He joined British Aerospace and in his 9 years there, he had been promoted to Head of Manufacturing for the Hawk and Harrier airframes having a specialism in advanced composite materials.

He joined McLaren in 1989 as Head of Operations. On March 1st 2009, he assumed the role Head of McLaren Racing, when Ron Dennis stepped down to concentrate on developing McLaren automotive, the road car division.

Each of the 3 previous years under Whitmarsh, McLaren have trailed home Red Bull in the constructor’s championship. And whilst having built a reputation for being the best team during the season to advance their F1 car development, have also failed to deliver a World Driver’s Title in this period.

Whitmarsh clearly set his stall out to retain Lewis as a driver for the team at all costs to himself, but it seems obvious that he on Dennis were not on the same page (link to prev article). The whole twittergate and telemetry saga was quite ridiculous. I’m all for freedom in the social media of F1 personnel and with regards to the previous “WTF?” Lewis tweet – who cares?

The telemetry tweet was a completely different matter, a most serious breach of conduct imaginable. Lewis was criticising his own teams’ judgement call in public as well as embarrassing he whole team by publishing confidential internal documents. Ask any one of the senior team members how much they enjoyed the flood of fun poking taking texts they received from t other teams following Lewis’ action.

Yet Whitmarsh took no action. All we had was a slightly embarrassed, “we asked him to take that one down” comment and nothing else. No reprimand, no fine and I don’t think we even heard Lewis apologise in public for the very public embarrassment he caused.

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Lewis keeps Mercedes in F1

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Now the dust is settling following the Hamilton announcement, there are a number of threads to tidy up, but we’ll start with some housekeeping.

Firstly, forgive me for some of the Tabloid headlines which are presently being used and are designed to attract attention, but we are a new blog and it is a good way of grabbing readers who have not heard of us. I will get to the headline of this article shortly.

Also, there has been a certain amount of cynicism over whether we do in fact have access to ‘inside’ information at times, but this is not actually that important except from the fact it is helpful when trying to work out what will be the next talking point.

More fundamental to the articles being written is that we’re trying to address the issues and the questions the headline writers and mainstream F1 travelling media circus miss by chasing the breaking news.

This will hopefully mean that we will call things before the headline writers do. Feathers in the cap so far, Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC a week before it was announced. Further, today a number of high profile media commentators who travel with the F1 circus have now begun looking at why Lewis has actually left McLaren.

One example is Martin Brundle who said on the F1 show on Sky TV that if McLaren had really wanted to keep Lewis they could have done quite a lot more. Without using the word “pushed” he acknowledged McLaren had been feeling the need to move on from Lewis as much as Lewis did from McLaren. Others you will have seen have been saying similar things in reflection a day after the big announcement.

So that’s 2 strong predictions in the first 2 weeks of the blog – not too bad – but a weekly statistic that will be impossible to live up to I suspect.

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