McLaren record breaking year, Ecclestone says 19 races 2013, Todt referees Ecclestone-Ferrari spat, Webber calls for more European races, Texas pays Austin organisers $29m, Mercedes W03 – a space ship

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thejudge13 archive: I was reminded yesterday by Kevin McCauley that there are new readers coming to the site all the time. There are some articles I have written since the launch of the site nearly 13 weeks ago that they may not be aware of. A lot of the articles though are part of the daily news I’m afraid, hence why I have put a search bar on the right hand side.

If you type “Mallya” into the search bar for example – all the articles that have that string “Mallya” within them (main body not just headings) will be presented for you. However, every few days I’ll put a complete feature from the past just above “On this day in F1” for those of you who missed them. Today’s archive article, “F1: Breeding ground for road car technology? No chance“.

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Fernley criticises Hulkenberg, ‘Concorde’ agreement faces anti-competitive legal scrutiny, Williams lose 2 contracts in 1 week, SKY need new sposnor, McLaren target 2s stops ‘as normal’, Austrain GP no go, Barrichello to leave INDY

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Fearnly criticises Hulkneberg: It appears Nico Hulkenberg’s move to Sauber may not have been the best decision of his career – if you listen to deputy team principal of Force India, Bob Fernley.”Nico has left the team at an inopportune moment for him,” he suggested in an interview with Autosport ‘.

He goes on to argue, “If you look at the stats since the summer break, the Force India car was clearly the fifth best performing. We’re still quite a distance off the top four, but since the summer break we’ve forged ahead of all the others.”

We then get the usual platitudes of separated lovers remaining friends, “We’re very sad to see Nico go,” he said. “He’s been a great asset to the team. We’ve enjoyed having him around and it’s a loss to us. There’s no question that we’re sad he’s leaving.”

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Vettel cuts it fine and Kimi…Vodka and Telecoms to Sposnor F1, Winter F1 testing shortened, India ‘best event’, Bargain price for 2013’s 20th race, Webber hospitalised, Kubica finished in F1, F1 art

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Vettel cuts it close & Kimi…: The FIA rules state that to be the World Drivers Champion, the driver must attend the end of season prize giving ceremony and receive in person the trophy. Well, Vettel almost missed the FIA’s end of season FIA prize giving gala.

DPA news agency reports that the Red Bull driver actually landed at the airport in Istanbul only to discover he did not have his passport, and initially he was refused entry into Turkey. For those of us who travel by air and can’t understand how this can happen because we have to show passports to board a commercial flight, Vettel arrived on a private jet and had the trauma of having to wait over an hour at the airport.

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Drivers of 2012 results, Austria for 2013, F2 finished? or to be born again, Bernie’s replacement, Michael Schumacher – just perfect, Aston require another £500m

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F1 calendar affects Goodwood: “Given that the Festival of Speed is the only event in the world outside of a World Championship Grand Prix where you can get a close up view of the latest F1 cars and drivers in action, we will now have to change the Festival’s date in order to avoid this conflict with the amended Grand Prix calendar,” the organisers said today in a statement. “Goodwood is now reviewing the 2013 Festival of Speed dates and will confirm these very soon. We apologise for any inconvenience this change may cause, but sadly this is outside of Goodwood’s control.”

The Festival which attracts about 180,000 visitors was originally scheduled for the 5-7th July, Between the British and German GP’s. The latest attempt by the FIA/FOM at a calendar moved the German GP to this weekend to make room for an ‘unspecified’ other European race.

The reason FOM are desperate for another race is to replace the delayed New Jersey GP which will now not happen until at least 2014. Why not just have 19 races? FOM is claiming to investors that it is on a continual march forward and more races means more money and more profit. To take a step backwards would affect investor confidence.

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Stewards back slapping, Vettel suit sells for $18,000, Gascoyne enters the danger zone, 2013-14 rules and who this helps, Austin want a new date, Turkey 2013 agreed

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Win 2 hospitality passes to Silverstone 2013 and vote for thejudge13 at the Silverstone Media Awards: “Best F1 Blogger” category. Here’s where to vote, Facebook users www.facebook.com/SilverstoneCircuits. Non-Facebook users (Link). Voting closes 12:00 hrs on 11 December, 2012.

FIA Stewarding: It appears that Charlie and the Stewards are feeling rather pleased with themselves with regard to the rather narrow topic of penalties. I hope we hear a little more on race management as a whole. Anyway here is the FIA release.

At a meeting chaired by F1 Race Director Charlie Whiting, the stewards praised the recent introduction of readily available real-time telemetry and added that the presence of former and current racing drivers on the stewarding panels has been a benefit. 

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Kamui tweets ‘another season’, Bottas Sponsor speaks out, Rolex replace Hublot, Ferrari Cartoon, Alonso the Samurai, How much f1 drivers earn, McLaren 2012 profits set to decline, Brawn – staff jigsaw complete

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Bottas Sponsor believes he’s getting value for money : The topic of pay drivers appears to be one I hear discussed all too regularly and maybe part of the reason for this is we are seeing F1 drivers come and go more quickly than in days gone by. I think there are only 11 drivers confirmed for 2013 that started the 2011 season.

But at times its hard to understand why the sponsors behind the drivers are prepared to pay millions of dollars to get their protoges an F1 seat. The man behind the Grove teams latest young star driver is Anders Antti Aarnio-Wihuri, chaiman and majority shareholder of WinPak Ltd.

WinPak area highly succesful international business, established in 1975 and they manufacture and distribute packaging materials and related packaging machines primarily for the packaging of perishable foods, beverages, and for use in health care applications.

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Ecclestone keeps Marussia hanging by a thread – could there be just 10 for 2013?

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A pretty girl

Marussia, is an old Russian word for a pretty girl – but it may be more appropriate to consider the pretty big mess the team finds itself in right now. The F1 team are often described in the media as a ‘Russian team’ yet they have hardly anything about them that is Russian.

CEO Andy Webb admits this but that the plan is to engage engineers from Russia in building Marussia F1 Team cars. Special programs are being developed in Oxford for Russian specialists to train in the UK.

“If we want to be a Russian team we need more of Russia in it: in engineering, marketing, mechanics,” Webb said in the publication ‘Russia’. “My goal is to have at least 10 percent of our staff to be Russian. Now we have only 1 percent.”  Webb has also indicated that the team could name a Russian pilot in 2014. Also, there is an idea that there should be a Russian driver in the team.

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Ecclestone de Montezemolo spat deepens, Pirelli want a long contract, Silverstone lost £1m, Austrian GP? Tyre stats for 2012

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Ecclestone Responds to Il Padrino: Bernie Ecclestone has responded via the BBC to Luca de Montezemolo’s comments about his age and competence. “The one thing he is correct about is my age – there is no doubt about that. I can’t do anything about that. I’m 82 years old and that’s how it is.”

He alludes to the Italian teams bosses apparent rudeness being a result of his recent foray into Italian politics. “I suppose it’s the same sort of thing that’s happened to him recently in politics, where people have been quite rude about him.

Amusingly Ecclestone turns the tables on Luca and suggests his memory is faulty too. “He says he doesn’t remember what he says very often. Luca is not as old as me. I’m sure in his case it is nothing to do with his age because he’s always been the same. At least he’s consistent. God knows what’s going to happen when he’s 82”.

The fatherly advice from Ecclestone continues, “No, Luca is a lovely guy, I’m probably as a big a supporter of him as anybody. I am a big admirer of Luca’s and I’m sorry for all the trouble he’s had with politics recently. He should never have got involved in the first place.”

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Ecclestone, Parr and the “Night of the long knives”

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A man speaks up

Remember back to the 3rd ever FOTA fans forum in Montreal 2011. Adam Parr, the then chairman of Williams, called for F1 to challenge Bernie Ecclestone over the direction of the sport. His basic premise was that Mr. E doesn’t really understand modern technology and is missing a significant number of opportunities to drive F1 revenue.

I think I heard someone else in the past few days suggests age was a factor mitigating F1’s CEO ability to operate competently. Parr said that night, ‘The way F1 is consumed is going to change over the next few years. There’s so much content you should be able to enjoy. Bernie has two or three cameras on every car. Then there are all the circuit cameras.

‘There’s an astonishing richness of material and we’re not really touching that at the moment.’ Assessing the way Ecclestone manages content, Parr added: ‘There are two things that Bernie thinks about. First, he likes to control the amount of material that’s available. He believes that rarity is an important characteristic of our sport.

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