Force India

Arrest warrant for Mallya, McLaren secret new DDRS, BBC evicts thejudge13, and more coming soon

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F1 News, Fun links and comment

  1. Grim times for Kingfisher and Vijay Mallya. The striking pilots and engineers who have not been paid since March has been asked by the company’s  CEO Sanjay Agarwal to return to work on Sunday 13th October. The airline has been grounded for over a week. The Indian Civil Aviation Authority has threatened to revoke their license and has demanded no tickets are sold in the interim. (Economic Times). Mallya does have other investments and is being pressured to sell the liquor business to come up with the cash. Whether Force India as they are will be on the grid 2013 – only time will tell.
  2. BREAKING NEWS (GMT 12:48) “Force India boss Vijay Mallya has run into more trouble in Hyderabad where the 13th Metropolitan Sessions Court has issued an arrest warrant against him in a case filed by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd which manages the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport”. (AFP News Agency) This warrant is without bail, because representatives failed to attend a hearing today – which means if or when he submits himself to the court he will be detained. It is estimated his airline is $billions in debt. Oh how far it is to fall .(Nice to see we beat the all established F1 sites and writers to this by an hour and 10 mins :D)
  3. Schumacher says the WDC title is Vettel’s to lose (autohebdo) “I thought Fernando (Alonso) had the advantage prior to Suzuka”, but now he believes it is Vettel’s to lose. Schumacher is certain his compatriot will now enter the exclusive club of winning 3 consecutive titles, a feat only achieved by Fangio (4) and Schumacher(5) himself.

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Montreal promoters go bust, Schumacher gives Mercedes 5 mins warning, Perez must stop fibbing, Kingfisher employee family suicide

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It’s race weekend, and for those of you who have only joined us since Singapore, thejudge13, is often a little quieter over race weekends – as the focus of the F1 world is on reporting breaking news – who said what to who – who was fastest in which session, so Friday (or is it now Saturday in Japan) before a race is a good time to try to tie up any loose ends that are worthy of note, but not a full article.

A bit of housekeeping first.

Please, please leave comments to the articles, even if you think I’m talking rubbish – tell me. I’ve only had to moderate 1 comment so far for use of the f-word – it still got published but with “[mod]” replacing the offending  euphemism.

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Schauber or Ferrari? Schumacher’s options

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Considering the Hamilton and Perez moves were announced practically simultaneously, the mystery surrounding Michael Schumacher’s future remains. As usual picking the bones out of what the different parties say is not easy.

Schumacher’s manager Sabine Kehm (Bild), suggests Michael had opportunities with Mercedes and “could have been able to sign if he had wanted to earlier in the summer.” So, we are led to believe it is Schumacher’s indecision over whether he wishes to continue driving at all that has forced Mercedes hand in taking advantage of the Hamilton opportunity.

This may have been the case in the end. Michael’s maybe have been holding out for a 2 year deal instead of the 1 year deal Mercedes had on offer and it is this prevarication that has cost him the seat within the team he has been helping to build. But that does not mean he feels he is done with driving in F1.

Strangely there has been no talk of an offer for Michael to join Mercedes management team and they have already made the slightly inexplicable appointment of Niki Lauda last week to the board. It appears as though there is no room at the Mercedes table for the man who has surely helped build this team since Mercedes acquisition.

Suddenly in 2012, he is the fastest driver in Monaco qualifying and has out qualified Rosberg in 8/14 race weekends. He has only finished 7 races, but in 6 of those he finished ahead of Rosberg (Bahrain being the exception). His average time behind the pole time is (0.936 secs) against NR (1.145secs) and he has also qualified on average 7th and Rosberg has managed 8th.

So without a couple of crashes and some poor pit work meaning a lost tyre and without the numerous gearbox failures, Schumacher would be close if not ahead of Rosberg in the championship and that would be a big story.

Suggesting that Michael may want to retire again would have been more credible after year 2 of his comeback when he clearly struggled get to grips with the driving style required to maximise the off throttle engine blowing that dominated car design. But now?

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