circuit of the americas

Lewis to secure another title in the US? The Ultimate US GP Weekend Guide

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Introduction: Lewis Hamilton can secure a fourth F1 driver’s title at the United States Grand Prix this weekend. After Sebastian Vettel’s retirement last time out, Lewis now enjoys a 59 point lead with only 4 races remaining. Ferrari will look to secure a strong result and hope for an unlikely Mercedes meltdown to get Sebastian … Read more

Circuit Of The Americas… Making the Grade!

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Autoweek reported earlier this week that Jason Dial, CEO of Circuit Of The Americas (COTA),  has been fired. The board of directors voted Dial out but were scant with details. The implications are that he is the scape-goat for the financial failure that was the United States Grand Prix. There are generally three sides to every … Read more

The US Grand Prix, an Oasis Among the Tempest

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Austin Texas; Circuit Of The Americas The Saturday session for the United States Formula 1 Grand Prix was a washout. The rain that started falling overnight sustained throughout the day, and continued into the evening. There was a brief window of highly marginal conditions which allowed free practice 3 to proceed. Race organizers held onto … Read more

Daily #F1 News and Comment: Monday 11th November 2013

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This page will be updated throughout the day. Please if you are on Twitter press the tweet button below. If you re-write and tweet individual story headlines don’t forget to include #F1. You may not realise how significant this is and has helped grow our community significantly in the past couple of months – thank … Read more

HRT Engineers worried about safety, Villenueve: ‘Vettel’s a child’, COTA wins Global award, Partially sighted driver wins Indy 500, Rosberg on Schumacher, Alonso/Vettel title permutations, RB to join elite club, US GP record: F1’s smallest winning margin

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HRT price tag 40m euros: Thesan Capital (who we think are Banco Popular in disguise – see news yesterday) have most reasonably come clean today and suggested they would be happy to receive back their original investment of 40m euro’s. I bet they would, these are the last desperate scrabbling to realise some cash back on what was a ridiculous venture destined to fail.

If someone pays Thesan 40m euro then there is still 10’s of millions more for the new owners to find to get the team back on its feet again after paying off the debt. Of course there is the prize money from coming last this year, and whilst prize money in F1 is a closely guarded secret, I believe 12th is worth only about 7.5m euro ($10m). The likelihood is HRT will just cease to exist.

The reason I say this, is because there has been for 3 years agreement among the teams for a 13th team to race. This has never happened due to the inability of anyone to get the required funding for an F1 start up. Buying HRT is worse than starting a new team as there will be debts, unpaid wages, a factory in Madrid that would be better located in the UK – why pay anything for them? The prize money is insignificant compared to the rest of the costs.

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Austinites view F1 like a folk festival, McLaren fundamental to Formula E 2014, Who is the F1 driver chain smoker? Teams sharing garages, 204 less pit stops in 2012, HRT sale forced by bank bailout request

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Bank bailout forces HRT sale: Meanwhile, the team travels to Austin with the minimum staff to compete and avoid a financial penalty from FOM for being absent (as.com). We may well see the cars qualify, start the race and retire the cars after one lap.

thejudge13 has previously reported that HRT are using parts way beyond their sanctioned life and has a debt to repay before December 2nd or face dissolution. Thesan Capital, we believe, is a front for the Banco Popular who applied yesterday for a bailout of 2.5bn Euro’s. The terms of the bailout are that all non-profitable assets of the bank must be identified and disposed of – including HRT.

As to the story that Colin Kolles is interested in buying the team, this is fantasy by Thesan Capital. He was ‘exited’ last December when the debt from Banco Popular was assigned to Thesan Capital who on taking control issued a statement explaining Colin’s departure, “This is due to the new direction that the team has taken and the decision of the new management to move the team headquarters to Spain,” it read. (Yallf1.com)

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Austin will favour Red Bull, Mercedes should’ve kept Schumy not Nico, FOM wants USA GP2, McLaren supply to Force India ends, Huge Brawl, How Maldonado finds an extra 1s per lap,

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Note from the editor: Sorry folks, had a couple of days off – anyway we’re back. I notice quite a lot of you must have thejudge13 saved in your internet browser as a favourite and use this as the way of coming to the site. Over the Winter there may not be an article every day, so if you sign up for the email service (side bar on right at the top), you’ll get an email when thejudge13 has published an article/news AND only then. Anyway some news catchup. . .

Mallya sells, implications for Force India: Shares in United Spirits soared this morning 14 per cent to hit its new 52-week high after Uk-based firm Diageo Plc said that it will acquire 53.4 per cent stake in United Spirits for around $2bn. Vijay, will remain as chairman, however the real power is transferred to Diageo representatives who will take on the roles of CFO and CEO (Economic Times).

This sounds like good news, yet industry experts reckon it will cost no less than $1bn to get Kingfisher airlines back in the sky’s and Vijay has until 30th November to satisfy the Indian Aviation Authorities that the Kingfisher Airlines new business plan is sound – and clear the debts.

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Marlboro McLaren becomes McLaren Nicorette, COTA business plan highly optimistic, Lewis leaving was all about the money, Austin Council votes to tax COTA, New F1 film for release in Austin

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Vodafone scale down sponsorship:  It has been widely rumoured that Vodafone will be pulling out of its 6 year relationship with McLaren at the end of 2013. This has been considered to be worth as much as $75m a year, which is stratospheric compared to the fee’s most sponsors of F1 teams pay. Joe Seward has done a great article on this today, the link is at the end if this section.

The points worthy of comment are, Glaxo Smith Klien (GSK) has been extending its relationship with McLaren, and in a big announcement in the summer the announced a “ground-breaking collaboration” which will apply McLaren’s winning expertise to the needs of GSK, the aim being to help it to function more efficiently with more efficient planning processes and better modelling tools to drive faster decision-making. This includes the construction of a learning facility called the ‘McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance’, which is under construction at McLaren’s Headquarters in Woking.they announcedis setting up.

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