Éric Boullier

Just days left for HRT, Post race bits, TV ratings, In depth analysis called for by Luca, Bernie’s days numbered, Vettel and the yellow light

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Following a slightly different type of race review – I did feel I little etherial when writing it – here’s a few bits and pieces of post race stuff to tidy up.

Post race bits and pieces

Alonso: I allude in the ‘epitaph’ in the race review my disappointment with both title contenders for their points scoring efforts after the race. Alonso,  “With a car that is slower than the others we can win a championship, with a car that is the same as the others we can win the championship with some races to go and with a car that is a lot slower than the others we fought until the last race”. If’s, buts and maybe’s don’t cut the mustard and it is not worthy of you Fernando to give us this spiel.

I just listened to that interview again and Alonso actually says, “With a kart that is…”, not quite the Prost reference to a ‘truck’ but not far away.

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Koby support website, Aabar buy Torro Rosso, Wurz no HRT saviour, Mastercard to follow Coca Cola,

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Post Qualifying:

McLaren now have more 1-2 grid positions than any other team in F1 – 62 in total. 1st pole in Interlagos since 2000. Seems like the car likes the Pirelli hard-medium tyre, as in Austin.

Hamilton: “Pole! What a great feeling! It’s been a fantastic weekend so far. We don’t yet know for certain what the weather conditions will be like tomorrow, but I hope that both Jenson and I will be able to push for victory. I’ve usually started from fourth grid position at Interlagos, and it hasn’t always given me much success. Before qualifying, I told Martin that I really didn’t want to start fourth this time. All in all, I’m very proud and happy that I got pole.

“Jenson and I are in the best possible starting positions for tomorrow. However, if it’s wet, the lead car is the always the first to aquaplane or hit the puddles, so, even if we both get good starts, we’ll still need to be cautious. Equally, however, I don’t want to drop back at the start because it would then be very difficult to see in all the spray. We haven’t had a one-two in a race for quite a long time [Canada 2010], so it would be a great positive for the team if we could achieve it tomorrow. It would be my perfect farewell, in fact.”

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Lewis rude helmet, Perez under pressure, TR quick to blame drivers, F1 team bosses ‘bubble’ world,

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The deep south: London Times reporter tweeted the following, “Blimey. We hear gunshots and ask William our cabbie what they are aimed at. “People, man, people” he says and speeds up”.

Hotels: Still puzzling me, Austin tourist info tells us there are 30,000 hotel rooms city wide. At 2 per room that’s only 60,000 people and yet when I checked, there were many vacancies tonight.

Fans: COTA says there were 83,000 fans there today, which makes a total of around 148,000 so far – Silverstone levels.

Ferrari qualify as in Abu Dhabi: 7th and 9th again, except this time with Massa in front. Alonso is magnanimous and says his team mate did a better job than him. Bleak picture for Ferrari after Q3 (pic)

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Hulkenberg refuses contract extension, Webber walks out of FIA conference, Sutil to return to Force India, Ecclestone refutes he’s being replaced,

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Indian GP attendance down 1/3rd: The drivers gave a thumbs-up to the 5.14 kilometre track enjoying the challenge of the layout and the teams and media hailed the clean paddock and the facilities sported a completed look that was not the case last year. However, no one could avoid the dip in the numbers of fans, the most important constituent of any sport, as 65,000 of them turned up for Sunday’s race down from last year’s 95,000.

Mr. E is of course not worried, “First races are always high and the second year goes down. If the third year isn’t going up, then it’s something to worry about”, he jocularly observed “We have a [another] competitor here. What’s the name of that game? Cricket?”, suggesting F1 has a way to go to make an impression on the Indian sporting psyche.

Indian motor sports federation chief Vicky Chandhok reiterated the same three-year cycle and predicted a bigger turnout in 2013. “Formula One is like this only. This is the trend everywhere. From third race onwards, you’d see some kind of stability. Overall, it has been a huge improvement from last year”.

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Korea GP review: Alonso and Kobayashi know the game is up. More poor marshalling ruins the race

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The rather limp wristed waft of the chequered flag by Psy, of “Gangnam Style” fame, probably encapsulated the event that was the 2012 Korean GP.

The headlines are, Vettel takes the lead in driver’s WDC from Alonso for the first time since Valencia, and Red Bull extend their lead in the constructors’ table, with Ferrari significantly overtaking McLaren for 2nd place.

Marshalling ruins another race

As I suggested following Singapore, the marshalling of the event had a significant impact today and  robbed us of what could have been a very exciting race. How it took until lap 10 to move Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes is beyond me, particularly when considering where it was. Races with high tyre wear are often fascinating in strategy and can produce exciting finishes. By lap 2 when the DRS was available, the cars were still tightly bunched any number of drivers may have been able to have a go at Vettel and a number of position interchanges would have occurred.

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

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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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