F1 blog

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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Bernie on flag-gate, McLaren MP12-4C wins car of the year, Brawn Ferrari return, BIC wants winter testing, F1 in schools – India, FIA statement on Ferrari letter

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Note from the editor: It’s happening I’m afraid – today is the first day I’m scratching around for stories 🙁 Following comments from readers about the difficulty of finding new stories on the page during a 2nd or subsequent return to thejduge13 in the day, I think for now – if I add to an existing story, I’ll put for example, UPDATE 11:44 GMT, and each new story for the day will appear at the bottom just above “On this day in F1″ – would that help.

I am constrained by the software I use and my at the moment inability to write code to tailor it. Hopefully if we could do well and even get a mention in the Silverstone awards, some investment may then flow and can help with this.

Register with thejudge13 for email notification of new articles. Click on the button at the top right of the page to receive an email when (and only when) a new article hits the interweb.

Silverstone Media Awards: Many thejudge13 readers are outside the UK (65%) and I’ve had a few enquiries as to whether they are eligible to vote. The answer is yes and all you need to do is leave your name and an email address to vote on Silverstone’s website – the links are below.

Last years winner was a polish blog called F1 talks. (Link)

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Ferrari consider appeal – I’m considering becoming King of England – but the rules prevent both of us from acting upon our musings

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Register with thejudge13 for email notification of new articles. Click on the button at the top right of the page to receive an email when (and only when) a new article hits the interweb.

Silverstone Media Awards: Many thejudge13 readers are outside the UK (65%) and I’ve had a few enquiries as to whether they are eligible to vote. The answer is yes and all you need to do is leave your name and an email address to vote on Silverstone’s website – the links are below.

Last years winner was a polish blog called F1 talks. http://www.f1talks.pl

If you enjoy thejudge13 site, please take the 2 minutes to vote for it. I am committed to an advert free site, because all these pop ups drive me crazy but I do want to develop the site and an award like this will help me in two ways. I am looking to syndicate articles to International publications (mostly local media) where they have no local F1 knowledge and rely on Reuters news feeds to educate their readers.

Of course I would be paid for this syndication but the funds received will go towards taking thejudge13 onward and upward. One of the things I am looking at is a podcast for 2013. Much of the current media produced F1 audio/visual material is quite starchy and I believe there is room for a weekly discussion programme of a more relaxed nature – with regular expert fans and guests.

I am presently talking to a well know F1 media individual about this, but there will be a cost attached. Getting sponsorship is easier when you’ve won an award. So please take a couple of minutes to help thejudge13 in turn help you get even more from F1 in 2013.

31 people so far have clicked through on the link previously provided, so here’s how Silverstone tell you to vote.

Fans can cast their votes now via Silverstone Circuit’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/SilverstoneCircuits. Voting closes 12:00hrs on 11 December, 2012. To vote from a mobile visit http://www.silverstone.co.uk/silverstone-media-awards-2012/

A Post race review and change of champion: I had decided this debate had run its course, particularly because even though I’ve complained all season about Race management issues, even IF Vettel is guilty, the infringement was missed by the stewards and the matter is similar to debating whether a penalty should have been awarded in a crucial football (soccer for the US) match.

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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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Pre Race Review Brazil 2012: Red Bull, “Business as usual” – nonesense.

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Last race decider – again

Here we are again. A championship decider showdown in Interlagos once again. 2007,08 and 09 were the last 3 times the title was decided here because in 2010 the final race was in Abu Dhabi and in 2011 we had Sebastian and Red Bull doing a Michael and Ferrari impression and running away with the titles long before the seasons finale.

Interlagos is like Spa, a place where the weather is highly erratic. Unlike Spa, it is often much more violent and staccato in the way it can punctuate a session and be done in a very short while. A good example of this was qualifying yesterday when before the session it when very dark – rained – and by the end of the session bright sunshine was re-instated.

For all Vetell’s words of assurance that the approach to this weekend is the same as any other, I’m not buying it. Alonso has clearly had nothing to lose for a while and his driving has demonstrated this. We all expected levels of grip for the race Austin to be similar to ice racing, and many expected a huge turn 1 incident with the cars also running on cold tyres. Yet Alonso chose to go around the outside, the most dangerous place to  bring there were cars sliding everywhere.

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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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Pic to Caterham, Gutiérrez to Sauber, Heikki out, Alosno $10m WDC win bonus, Dennis conspicuous by absence, FI $80m announcement to shore up confidence, Lewis appears whistful, Mr. E warns Interlagos

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Editor’s note: So much is happening and the driver market has been moving quickly, so since I release the last post GMT 00:00 I am releasing another one to make update’s easier to read.

I’ve added a ‘search bar’ on the right hind side bar…so if you want to find a story easily you can type “Lewis pushed” and all articles with that phrase will be presented in a list.

Also the end of season is iminent. To save you checking thejudge13 daily when there are no new articles why not sign up for an email notification: Click on the button at the top right of the page to receive an email when (and only when) a new article hits the interweb.

Yesterday we met our friends from Malaysia. Today I want to say Hi to those of you from Indonesia who regularly read the site – introduce yourselve’s in the comments. Thank you for reading regularly.

Dominicali: When asked at the FIA conference about the new engines and regulation changes for 2014, he said “we already have a group of small people already working on the project”. I don’t know what to say really. Oompa Lumpa’s – chocolate rivers at Maranello

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Heikki 2013 chances slim, Perez burns his bridges, Mercedes abandon Coanda, Luca relinquishes political ambition

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Editor’s note: Thank you for the many kind words about my rehab. I am on less hallucinogenic tablets now and am raring to go for the seasons finale.

In line with recent habit of identifying far flung thejudge13 readers, I want to say Hello to those of you from Malaysia. Say hello in the comments – we’re glad of your support.

 Heikki on 2013: thejudge13 reported yesterday that Heikki may be struggling for a drive in 2013. Having had a chat with someone who knows more than me, I revealed the analysis of Kovaleinen’s performance against his team-mate which was not great – and this in part is what teams do look at.

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Ecclestone faces another Fraud charge over 2005 sale of F1 to CVC

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thejudge13 reported in an article Oct 9th “Ecclestone to load F1 with a mountain of debt” that German bank, Bayern LB was suing Bernie Ecclestone for $400m and that Ecclestone and his partners appeared to be cashing in as quickly as possible. Today Bluewaters, an investment fund has filed a lawsuit in New York against CVC, Bernie Ecclestone and BayernLB Gerhard Grikowsky. The claim is that Ecclestone conspired to prevent them from buying the rights to F1 in 2005.

Bluewaters says it had put together a bid for F1 for $1bn ahead of the CVC purchase which was to be funded by Alpolo Capital Management and King Street Capital Management. The claim states that Bluewaters had negotiated with the now imprisoned Gribkowsky of the Bayern LB bank, they were prepared to offer more than any other bidder for the sport.

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