HRT

Daily F1 News and Comment: Thursday 2nd May 2013

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This page will be updated throughout today Comment of the day From TJ13 reader Stephen Hughes who sums up the ‘gay’ F1 debate pretty conclusively. “I remember reading a piece a year or more back about gay drivers in F1. A number of names were mentioned, including Ralf Schumacher, Adrian Sutil and even Alonso! I … Read more

Proof McLaren were influenced in Perez selection by cash

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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.

TJ13 News: Sorry about earlier post, the wordpress spirits refused to allow me to post my Scorpion Racing scornful review repeatedly??? Maybe I’ll sneak it in here – wink, wink – every other sentence.

Tomorrow we see the launch of a very exciting new ‘On this day’. I think you’re going to like  a lot. I’ve always enjoyed these kinds of features on other sites, but I tried to make it more contemporary with as many YouTube videos as possible when I was playing at it. However, time was always against me.

The dedicated TJ13 chroniclers will do an exceptional job, and if anyone knows how I can set up a second page and create a whole archive with a calendar research tool, please contact me on thejudge13@hotmail.co.uk

Further, the winner of the longest outstanding mini quiz I’ve run – about 24 hours to guess the Brabham 1992 with Hill driving and was purple – reader John Myburgh – is devising some kind of regular feature quiz to keep you scratching your heads.

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Vettel cuts it fine and Kimi…Vodka and Telecoms to Sposnor F1, Winter F1 testing shortened, India ‘best event’, Bargain price for 2013’s 20th race, Webber hospitalised, Kubica finished in F1, F1 art

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2 days left to vote: 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.

Vettel cuts it close & Kimi…: The FIA rules state that to be the World Drivers Champion, the driver must attend the end of season prize giving ceremony and receive in person the trophy. Well, Vettel almost missed the FIA’s end of season FIA prize giving gala.

DPA news agency reports that the Red Bull driver actually landed at the airport in Istanbul only to discover he did not have his passport, and initially he was refused entry into Turkey. For those of us who travel by air and can’t understand how this can happen because we have to show passports to board a commercial flight, Vettel arrived on a private jet and had the trauma of having to wait over an hour at the airport.

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Nurburgring lifeline, Consistancy analysis, Vettel yellow flag storm brewing in Italy, Kingfisher Airlines finally finished, Champagne & Hot Dogs in Milton Keynes

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Vote for thejudge13 at the Silverstone media awards. “Best F1 blogger” is the category if you think we are. (Link). It only takes about 1 minute to do. I believe we have 14 votes so far from thjudge13 readers.

Nurburgring: My favourite subject, the 2013 F1 calendar. It’s a week for lifelines, first HRT and now Nurburgring. To cut a long story short, in February the operators of the circuit, NAG, were given an eviction notice for non-payment of rent. Today Motorsport are reporting this matter is now ‘settled’ – how or by whom we don’t know.

2 weeks ago a spokesman for NAG said, “Formula 1 is no more at the Nurburgring”, discussions with Ecclestone were cancelled and all the other 2013 events were at risk.

Today, “Now we have to make progress in the talks with the Bernie Ecclestone toward a contract”, said Thomas Schmidt of NAG. I presume the operating company had been declared insolvent or bankrupt and the original contract is therefore no longer in force. Anyway, good luck lads – Bernie’s feeling a little down and unwanted at the moment, you may catch him in a rare moment of weakness.

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Kamui website raises $800,000, HRT have ‘miracle’ hope, Melbourne tax payers cough up $55m, Brawn warns Red Bull, RB staff bonys £10,000, Grosjean in the naughty boy corner, Lewis expects 1/4 of sponsor work with Mercedes

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I think it might be a little early for thejudge13, but you could try voting for us at the Silverstone media awards – “Best F1 blogger”. (Link). Still nearly 55,000 reads in 10 weeks – not bad I guess

Support Kamui: The website set up last week to help Kobayashi get the funds to find an F1 seat is seriously working. They have raised 65,813,672 yen as of today (I think this is about $800,000). This is fairly startling and it will be interesting to see if the momentum and rate of donation can be maintained or increased.

Kamui is a very good driver, and as one of thejudge13 readers demonstrated in the comments to yesterdays news, if points were awarded 24 for 1st place down to 1 for last place (a consistency analysis) Kamui is way ahead of Perez this year. So if KK can raise $4m or more, he has to be in with a chance at Marusia or Caterham. I still think Mallya will take Senna’s $10-12m and sign him for that reason.

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Renault do a huge U-turn

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A bizarre mentality

thejudge13 reported on October 9th what I considered a rather strange story emanating from Renault. Here’s an excerpt from that day;

“Apparently Renault has said it will not provide any more teams with engines as it has 3 customers already. So Marussia and HRT needn’t bother knocking on the door of the Renault Chateau huh? The reason given by Jean-Francois Caubet, Managing Director of Renault Sport is that – (paraphrased) these 2 teams are rubbish and its bad for Renault’s image.

He tells Ferrari and Mercedes they need to do their fair share and supply 4 teams like Renault does now. This Gallic thinking is seriously flawed, because one would imagine the research and development costs are so high, building a few extra units for a couple more teams would share the cost around better for everyone”.

I then made a few disparaging comments about Jean-Francois and his possible drinking habits. Of course on November 6th, we then reported the ‘retirement’ of Jean-Francois Caubet and the appointment of his successor, Renault Sport’s president Jean-Michel Jalinier. However, Jean-Francois’ departure was overshadowed by the same day appointment of Renault Sport protoge Cyril Abiteboul as Tony Fernandes replacement at Caterham.

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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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Austin GP Review

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In no particular order, here are the post race threads to be gathered together…

The track and the race: Hat’s off to Mr. Tilke, it seems like he’s finally getting to grips with how to design a track. The topography makes the circuit visually really interesting and the combination of the 3 sectors made for an excellent race. “Turn 2 to turn 9 is probably the best sector I’ve driven in F1”, commented Jenson.

The race itself was tremendous with battles up and down the grid. There were concerns about overtaking but this was clearly not a problem, in fact at times we were back to the same old problem of the FOM TV director not really sure what to show.

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HRT Engineers worried about safety, Villenueve: ‘Vettel’s a child’, COTA wins Global award, Partially sighted driver wins Indy 500, Rosberg on Schumacher, Alonso/Vettel title permutations, RB to join elite club, US GP record: F1’s smallest winning margin

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HRT price tag 40m euros: Thesan Capital (who we think are Banco Popular in disguise – see news yesterday) have most reasonably come clean today and suggested they would be happy to receive back their original investment of 40m euro’s. I bet they would, these are the last desperate scrabbling to realise some cash back on what was a ridiculous venture destined to fail.

If someone pays Thesan 40m euro then there is still 10’s of millions more for the new owners to find to get the team back on its feet again after paying off the debt. Of course there is the prize money from coming last this year, and whilst prize money in F1 is a closely guarded secret, I believe 12th is worth only about 7.5m euro ($10m). The likelihood is HRT will just cease to exist.

The reason I say this, is because there has been for 3 years agreement among the teams for a 13th team to race. This has never happened due to the inability of anyone to get the required funding for an F1 start up. Buying HRT is worse than starting a new team as there will be debts, unpaid wages, a factory in Madrid that would be better located in the UK – why pay anything for them? The prize money is insignificant compared to the rest of the costs.

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Austinites view F1 like a folk festival, McLaren fundamental to Formula E 2014, Who is the F1 driver chain smoker? Teams sharing garages, 204 less pit stops in 2012, HRT sale forced by bank bailout request

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Bank bailout forces HRT sale: Meanwhile, the team travels to Austin with the minimum staff to compete and avoid a financial penalty from FOM for being absent (as.com). We may well see the cars qualify, start the race and retire the cars after one lap.

thejudge13 has previously reported that HRT are using parts way beyond their sanctioned life and has a debt to repay before December 2nd or face dissolution. Thesan Capital, we believe, is a front for the Banco Popular who applied yesterday for a bailout of 2.5bn Euro’s. The terms of the bailout are that all non-profitable assets of the bank must be identified and disposed of – including HRT.

As to the story that Colin Kolles is interested in buying the team, this is fantasy by Thesan Capital. He was ‘exited’ last December when the debt from Banco Popular was assigned to Thesan Capital who on taking control issued a statement explaining Colin’s departure, “This is due to the new direction that the team has taken and the decision of the new management to move the team headquarters to Spain,” it read. (Yallf1.com)

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