F1 News

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

2015 MEXICAN GRAND PRIX – FRIDAY PRESS CONFERENCE

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Transcript of the Friday Press Conference organised by the FIA for the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Vijay MALLYA (Force India), Claire WILLIAMS (Williams), Maurizio ARRIVABENE (Ferrari), Toto WOLFF (Mercedes), Yasuhisa ARAI (Honda) PRESS CONFERENCE Q: Claire, if I can start with you. Williams won this race the last time it was here … Read more

Global Motorsport Media to sue Adam Parr. Ferrari appoint De La Rosa, Dominicali: Ferrari helping Bianchi to get a 2013 drive, No Vettel-Alonso dream team, Lewis v Alonso,

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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. 

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

Note from thejudge13’s chambers: We hit 600 email followers yesterday and all in less than 18 weeks. Just over 450 on twitter and about 1,000 of you come direct from your browser/as a saved favourite. RSS appears to be stuck on 14 – but it said this on day 1 I put up the RSS feed – so my RSS reader may be telling porkies.

Anyway a big shout out to ‘ForzaJay’ from the forum www.thescuderia.net who posted a link to my ‘Da Vinci Code’ type article from yesterday and we had loads of reads from his colleagues there. Please say Hi ‘ForzaJay’ when you are here next.

Also Hi to ‘Tonka’ from Autosportforums who did the same with my article on Adam Parr, “Ecclestone, Parr and the night of the long knives”.

If any of you visit other F1 sites, please feel free to post links to an article on TJ13 that is relevent to whatever discussions are taking place in their forums/comments. Helps spread the word greatly. Grazzia 😀

One final word. There is a now a search tool on the right hand side. I use this daily to find stuff I’ve written before. If you want to exclude loads of things coming up as results try to use a 2 or 3 word search in “” eg. “Vettel yellow flag”. It searches the content of articles not just the titles so its pretty useful.

On to the day’s events – new’s is a little light so far, so I’ll publish this page and add to it as the day progresses.

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A peek at the ancestry of Ferrari’s new Head of Communications

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

I’m chuckling to myself even as I begin to pen this. This is sacking season at Ferrari and TJ13 readers and I were batting ideas around on who may be in the frame for this particular round back in November.

Luca Colajanni head of communications for Ferrari F1 has been ‘offered’ and accepted  a move to the car division and a ‘Europe/Middle East’ role, he will be replaced by Renato Bisignani. It is delightfully ironic that Ferrari have just bumped this out there, nothing on the website and no explanation. Communication indeed.

Luca was the guy who would appear on TV usually when there was some Ferrari crisis that meant Stefano could not be present. Byron Young of the Daily Mirror commented, “Sad to see Colajanni go. He’s a nice guy, quality PR man with real style. Ferrari man to his core who could (and did) argue black was white.”

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Yet more legal trouble for Ecclestone: ‘And now….the end is near…and so I face…the final curtain..’

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

There are times in life when the weight of issues bombarding you must make you sit up and think – some of this must be my own doing. Ecclestone is currently the subject of a writ from Bluewaters in the US courts who claim he discriminated against their offer to buy F1 at the time CVC acquired the commercial rights shares.

CVC had given Ecclestone a guarantee he would continue as CEO of FOM (the operating company that negotiates all commercial deals for the sport). Bluewaters had offered more money for the shares but categorically stated they would not give Mr. E the role of CEO because they had someone else in mind they felt would be better to managing their interests.

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Sergio Perez 1st day: The F1 event of the year, but what for the traditional F1 media?

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

Editor’s note: Well, at some point today thejudge13 received its 1000th subscriber. 579 of you follow by email, 439 by twitter and 14 on the new RSS feeds we introduced in the last week. Also in the next 7 days we will reach our 100,000th visitor.

The end of season survey demonstrated that about 50% of you come direct from a saved favourite in your browser or by typing in http://www.thejudge13.com. So in just 17 weeks here we are – 2000 regular’s. It’s my round and I’ll get the drinks in.

I hope you’re all enjoying tj13 and please comment on what you feel. I nearly dropped the youtube video links until one reader said they really enjoyed them. Also, ‘on this day in F1’ was under threat until another reader said they really appreciated the historic information this section brings.

If you do come direct from a browser or by typing http://www.thejudge13 – REMEMBER to click on the orange title of the latest article or any article you are reading. If you don’t you won’t see the comments of others or be able to make one of your own.

Media event of the year: Today saw the arrival of Sergio Perez at the Technology Centre in Woking for the first time. It was the media event of the year so far. I have seen the twitter accounts and web news reports for scores of journalists advertising their interviews with Checo – and remarkably he says pretty much the same thing to them all. Hey ho.

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Brabham family win 3 year legal battle, Bottas discusses Williams 2013 car: FW35, Alonso responds to Her Marko – briefly, Grosjean strategy for F1 in 2013

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

Brabham family win legal battle: Before the start of the 2010 season, a German businessman who bought the remains of the Super Aguri team lodged an application with the FIA to start a team under the Brabham name. The Brabham family then began court proceedings, claiming they knew nothing about the team or the businessman’s rights to use their name.

Two other legendary F1 constructors, Lola and March, also lodged applications to join the circus in 2010 but their efforts that came to nothing.

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Jackie Stewart accuses FIA of ‘disorganised management’, Maldonado funding hangs by a thread, Ferrari’s big plans for a new F1 facility, F1 drinks Texas dry

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

Jackie Stewart dismissed by the FIA: Just when you thought it was safe to read F1 news again we get Big Ron vs Lewis revisited, the F1 2013 calendar and now flag-gate all resurrected in a week.

Following the Brazilian GP, Jackie Stewart has been critical of the FIA’s handling of ‘flag-gate’. In an interview with Christian Sylt Stewart on cityam.com the former triple world champion asserts, “Was the judgement of yellow and green flags right or wrong in Brazil and why would that have to come up on a Wednesday or Thursday? That is a huge statement of a disorganised function that it should come up then.”

Sir Jackie argues the FIA practice of rotating the stewards race by race is problematic. ““How can you possibly have four different stewards at every Grand Prix? Why have you not got one professional – one man who goes to every race who is going to make consistent judgements and has got authority?”

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Ferrari announce… no launch date, Helmut Marko: Alonso too political, Nurburgring still not confirmed, Banks close to seizing Mallya’s assets, F1 car evolution

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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. I may be changing the way I publish articles, so that instead of updating the main daily post, 3-4 articles a day go out. If you don’t want to be bothered by an email each time you can ‘manage your subscription’ from within any of the emails you receive and set the frequency you desire to say ‘1 max per day’.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

2013 F1 calendar: Our favourite subject. At risk of getting reader DwilD started again, I’m afraid there is more to report. Having said that, I don’t remember a season in recent times where the number of issues on the calendar are yet subject to uncertainty.

Yesterday tj13 reported potential unrest in Bahrain. The week before Christmas we had the bizarre scenario of Barcelona claiming they knew nothing of the widely publicised bi-annual sharing arrangement with Valencia (LINK) and Valencia’s surprised response (LINK).

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The mystery behind the sacking of FIA doctor – Gary Hartstein

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Follow thejudge13: Why not follow thejudge13 by email. 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.

I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates.

FIA doctor sacked: In November, during the inaugural Austin Race the FIA doctor Gary Hartstein – successor to the legendary Sid Watkins – was dismissed by the FIA. thejudge13 reported a number of his tweets expressing bewilderment and the fact that he had no explanation for why this was happening. The FIA were then and have been silent since. (tj13 article)

Clearly Gary has been hurt and most upset by this and in December he resorted to an extraordinary and extended expression of this hurt and anger on twitter. The twitter explosion included the following, “I might launch a crusade to get some answers, or get my f***ing job back, or let the world know what’s really going on the medical side of the FIA”. (full exchange in tj13 article).

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