F1 Insiders Est. 2012
Toro Rosso: Best buddies now not even friends
Sometimes when reporting the news, it’s easy to get a cheap headline by taking out of context things said by those who are at the heart of the story. I read a secondary source reporting on this article from Melbourne based publication ‘The Age’ and that source was highly selective on the quotes they represented.
The article reveals that prior to joining F1 team Toro Rosso, Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne were the best of friends.
| Barcelon pre-season test 1: Day 3 | |||||
| Driver | Car | Best time | Laps | Diff | T |
| 1. Fernando Alonso | Ferrari F138 | 1’21.875 | 97 | S | |
| 2. Nico Hulkenberg | Sauber C32 | 1’22.160 | 91 | 0.285 | S |
| 3. Romain Grosjean | Lotus E21 | 1’22.188 | 119 | 0.313 | S |
| 4. Nico Rosberg | Mercedes W04 | 1’22.611 | 108 | 0.736 | M |
| 5. Pastor Maldonado | Williams FW35 | 1’22.675 | 79 | 0.800 | S |
| 6. Valtteri Bottas | Williams FW35 | 1’22.826 | 68 | 0.951 | S |
| 7. Jenson Button | McLaren MP4-28 | 1’22.840 | 71 | 0.965 | H |
| 8. Adrian Sutil | Force India VJM06 | 1’22.877 | 78 | 1.002 | S |
| 9. Mark Webber | Red Bull RB9 | 1’23.024 | 108 | 1.149 | M |
| 10. Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso STR8 | 1’23.366 | 106 | 1.491 | S |
| 11. Max Chilton | Marussia MR02 | 1’25.690 | 58 | 3.815 | S |
| 12. Giedo VD Garde | Caterham CT03 | 1’26.177 | 93 | 4.302 | S |
Not big on testing times, but Jenson on the hard tyre looks good. Sutil may be a little disappointing but its been a while and Caterham bottom of the pile again. TJ13 believes and stated for some time Marussia will overtake Caterham in 2013 and those colours are still nailed to the mast.
Tony F is AWOL and has apparently just spent £70m on 2 footballers for QPR (acquisition fee and wages over the life of their contracts). His tweets are mostly Air Asia and QPR related too.
Red Bull
I don’t know what this tells us about the team but Red Bull tweeted today, “Most obvious sign of changeover from Seb to Mark? Car’s parked on other side of the garage today… “.
Quick mention: A gentle nudge to read (if you haven’t in the past week) the newly revised ‘Project’ page on TJ13 and the ‘Judicial Board’ page under the ‘About’. Any help is gratefully accepted even for 1 hour a week. By the way we hit 150,000 visits last night since
Musings: Formula 1 at times appears to me like Big Time boxing. Whoaah – hold those horses and that indecent thought… Bernie and Jean in boots, shorts and a vest…gloves held high…duking it out…Damn – where’s a cartoonist when you need one.
Anyway, I was thinking more about the boxing drama that is the weigh in. This is a strange ritual where the competitors strip off their clothes and are left with merely a fig leaf for modesty. They stand on some scales in front of scores of photographic lenses and flashbulbs operated by strange unknown people… and then they face each other – toe to toe – with curled lips, dark stares and snarls of aggression.
F1 Forensics is brought to thejudge13 readers in partnership with SomersF1, Like most of us, Matthew Somerfield has a day job and his is being the manager of a car & van rental company in the Isle of Wight.
His passion is to try and bring us non-techies closer to F1 by bridging the gap between the full blown engineering publications and the simplicity of much that is provided by TV.
Ask Somers anything you want in the comments section. He’s part of the crew now and hang’s out here regularly.
And now over to Somers…
Williams took the FW34 to Jerez whilst the team continued to refine their 2013 design, they did however chose to run a vanity panel on the FW34 whilst putting the 2013 Pirelli’s through their paces.
| Barcelona Day 1 Testing Times | |
| 2012 | 2013 |
| 1 Sebastian Vettel Red Bull | 1. Nico Rosberg Mercedes |
| 01:23.265 | 01:22.616 |
| 2 Nico Hulkenberg Force India | 2. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus-Renault |
| 01:23.440 | 01:22.623 |
| 3 Lewis Hamilton McLaren | 3. Fernando Alonso Ferrari |
| 01:23.590 | 01:22.952 |
| 4 Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso | 4. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull-Renault |
| 01:23.618 | 01:22.965 |
| 5 Fernando Alonso Ferrari | 5. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Renault |
| 01:24.100 | 01:23.733 |
| 6 Michael Schumacher Mercedes | 6. Daniel Ricciardo Toro Rosso-Ferrari |
| 01:24.150 | 01:23.884 |
| 7 Sergio Perez Sauber | 7. Sergio Perez McLaren-Mercedes |
| 01:24.219 | 01:24.124 |
| 8 Bruno Senna Williams | 8. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes |
| 01:25.755 | 01:24.144 |
| 9 Romain Grosjean Lotus | 9. Esteban Gutierrez Sauber-Ferrari |
| 01:26.809 | 01:25.124 |
| 10 Heikki Kovalainen Caterham | 10. Max Chilton Marussia-Cosworth |
| 01:27.537 | 01:26.747 |
| 11 Charles Pic Marussia | 11. Charles Pic Caterham-Renault |
| 01:29.248 | 01:27.534 |
Williams FW35 launch
The last team to launch their 2013 car today unveiled the FW35. Noticeable was the apparent lack of sponsors on the car, but Williams have been here before and we’ll have to wait and see what is in the pipeline on this front.
There are 2 obvious features on the car that attract attention. here is a shot of the controversial exhaust guiding vane underneath the fish like ‘gills’ that features both on the Williams and the Caterham.
TJ13 announcement
We have 2 new recruits for the TJ13 team who will be bringing you ‘On this day’ once a week each. I am working with Samora Michael from Keyna and Kevin Russell – who I’m sorry I don’t have his global location yet (and he is currently enjoying a holiday) – on how to do the research and present us with our multi media review of F1 history.
Anyone who wishes to try their hand at this, please contact me at thejudge13@hotmail.co.uk
Sutil returns
The team getting a reputation for being somewhat dithery and making 11th hour decisions is back at the top of TJ13’s news roundup. It was announced today that Adrian Sutil will drive the force India car Tue-Thur in Barcelona with Jules Bianchi taking the wheel on Friday.
Enrique Hector Scalabroni (born Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina, October 1949) is an Argentinian race car designer, technical director, and team racing boss. He was employed by Dallara, Williams, Ferrari, Lotus and Peugeot Sport between 1985 and 2002, before setting up his own F 3000 and GP2 team in 2003, BCN Competicion, which lasted till the end of 2008.
Early Career
Scalabroni studied mechanical engineering at the Beunos Aires Technological university before being recruited by the Formula Renault Fama team in 1975. He later worked for the Osvaldo Antelo Renault F2 and Miguel Herceg’s Ford Turismo de Carretera official teams. In Argentina he designed and built his own small single seaters, Formula Renault, and national F2 single seater cars.
Scalabroni arrived in Europe in 1982 from Argentina at the age of 32. He evolved to became one of the principal designer at Williams, chief designer at Ferrari and Lotus, and the Technical Director with the Asiatech F1 engine manufacturing company.
Judge’s Chambers: Ruminations, the reading of tea leaves and an independent weighing of the evidence and subsequent comment Housekeeping: Check out the Judicial board under the ‘About’ tab on the top menu. We have some very talented individuals now helping TJ13 deliver an ever increasing coverage of all things F1. People are interested in F1 … Read more
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Sahara assets frozen
When I read this headline in the Indian Telegraph, I thought – clever chaps those Indians and this image sprang to mind.
If you want the background to this story, read “Force India: How the tower of cards could collapse” – Oct 14th 2012.
