F1 Insiders Est. 2012
Force India – FINALLY
Ask the ‘Children of Israel’ who followed Moses what it’s like to miss the boat. 40 years of wandering in the wilderness allegedly – one of the official ‘longest waits’ in history. Well I feel as though I’ve aged 40 yeaqrs whilst writing and speculating about what the hell is going on at Force India – and I think there’s more to come yet.
| 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… “.
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.
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Di Resta confirmed debate
I am amazed at the people who are certain Paul Di Resta is driving for Force India in 2013. I have been repeatedly questioned in my assertion that Force India have not announced this. Prior to today I’ve been repeatedly told he has a seat fitting and that Vijay told us in September he would be offering an extension to his drivers – as rumours of Hulkenbergs departure began to surface.
We’ve seen today the value of an F1 driving ‘contract’ as the likeable Timo Glock departs F1. For those ‘unbelievers’ who think Di Resta is a done deal, google something like ‘Force India announce Di Resta’ – and you will see a plethora of news stories about the announcements made for the season just ended.
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From TJ13’s chambers: Having been stranded due to the UK’s inept capabilities in handling snow and then struck simultaneously by a telecoms service cut – NO INTERNET – I have finally made it back to the 21st century following a succesful rescue helicopter air lift by harness from TJ13 Towers.
So I will begin by covering the essentials and then expand the comments and threads of ideas later.
Wolff joins Mercedes: TJ13 has been suggesting all is not well at Williams for some time, the departure of Mark Gillan to ‘spend more time with his family’ as a story that has not yet run its full course. This time last year, Mr. Ecclestone was putting pressure on the historic British team to change their ways.
Whispers last week
TJ13 reported earlier in the week that Mallya and Sahara could be in negotiations to sell part of all of the Force India Team. And raise much needed cash.
“I was chatting to someone this weekend who is both experienced and wise in the matters of team operations, and I told him of my increasing surprise at Force India’s lack of announcement of Di Resta. He smiled and said he was not. I pressed him on the matter insisting there is absolutely no reason not to announce a driver who will definitely be racing in 2013.”
He asked me one question. “When football clubs may be about to change owners or managers, do they announce new player contracts or leave those decisions for those about to take responsibility?” (TJ13 Link)
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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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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.
Certina and Sauber: Certina, the Swiss sports watchmaker are to extend their existing sponsorship of the Sauber F1 team. Apparently they will be gifting one of their precision time pieces to each member of the race team – not exactly sure what that means but it may be unlucky if you design widgets back at base maybe. Their logo will be on the drivers visors, the sidepods and wind deflectors.
“Certina has always been strongly committed to cutting-edge technology,” says Monisha Kaltenborn, CEO of the Sauber F1 Team, “and that’s an ideology we share. Since 2005, we have also been united by an enduring partnership that embraces common values such as innovation and efficiency. These are key factors behind the upturn in the Sauber F1 Team to which Certina has made a definitive contribution.”
Adrian Bosshard, President von Certina, corroborates this: “After an eight-year partnership with the Sauber F1 Team, we are delighted to be continuing to make use of this dynamic and innovative Formula One platform. The Team’s professional work ethic and typical Swiss mindset are the perfect match for our brand.” (Sauber Press Release)
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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.
Di Resta ‘surprised’ at dithering team decision making: When asked by and AP journalist how he felt about the lack of announcement from Force India over the 2013 team drive line-up he replied, “I am surprised there has been nothing yet.
TJ13 has been questioning for some time why Di Resta himself has not been confirmed and now just 3 weeks away from the 2013 cars hitting the test track in Jerez, this is more than just being tardy and must surely be disconcerting for the Scottish driver.
Di Resta’s views on this are, “The team have said they will announce it in good time as to where they are going to be, and I have to respect that”, but when it was suggested this must affect his preparation he candidly responds, “Ultimately, it does.
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).
