HRT

HRT run out of cash, Lewis and wedding bells, Ferrari’s Padrino wants answers now, Austin traffic problems, Greek parliament vote on GP venue, Petrov gets shirty, Kimi’s radio t-shirt, Vettel predicted podium

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HRT can’t afford 2013 entrance fee: German motor publication speedweek.de is reporting today that HRT do not have the 500,000 euro’s to pay for the entrance fee for 2013. F1 and Mr. E does not need their money however this represents a bigger concern over whether they have funds at all for 2013. The mechanical failures they have been having I am told is due to parts being run way beyond their intended life due to lack of funds for new ones. Looks grim!

Kimi pit radio: If you want to listen again, here’s the link to the Iceman’s irritation with Lotus team radio man, Simon. (LINK) You can have a shirt too, with Kimi’s memorable radio transmission as a statement for life in general (pic). I think the other one was better for flashing at the boss when getting your head pecked. “Yes yes yes yes I’m already doing it!!!”.

Vettel predicted podium: Horner told BBC TV late last night that he’d visited Sebastian in the morning prior to the race. He was playing a drum kit and causally waved at his boss saying – “See you on the podium later”. Christian to be fair said he thought 8th was the best they could get – and with less attrition it may have been the case.

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Chequered Flag and Podium Politics, Ferrari policy of a No.2 statistically irrational, Ferrari upgrades ‘no revolution’

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With many of the F1 personnel heading inter-continental, news yesterday and today is a little slow. But here we go anyway.

Ferrari admit they’re in trouble: Marc Gene at a publicity event for Shell Motorsport in Madrid today says the team have a number of upgrades for the Indian GP. He has been testing them in the simulator but is uncertain as to their effectiveness. He admits they will not know whether the upgrades work or not until they try them out on track on Friday. The most troubling comment was, “In India we will take a number of improvements to the cars, but they will not be a revolution, but we hope to help”. (as.com) Playing down the upcoming Indian GP Gene adds,  “Each of the next four races will be important but not decisive in itself.”

The problem Ferrari face is their recent lap times relative to Red Bull. In Singapore and Japan, their best time for the weekend was around 1% slower than Red Bulls, and although they closed this to 0.3% in Korea the kind of upgrades Gene is talking about will at best close the gap and of course Red Bull will not be standing still. To win in India, Alonso most likely needs to qualify on the front row and with the weather set fair this will be a huge ask.

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Lauda to sack Brackley personnel, Nascar mother of all pile ups, Lola closes doors, Tooned will be ‘racey’

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After battling with F1 and global finance until gone midnight on “Ecclestone to load a mountain of debt on F1“, then the day so far has been spent with lawyers – so we’ll start with a News Links post and see if I’ve got enough time and energy for an in depth article later. (Anything in wite on this page is a URL link to the original or pic or video).

Quick thanks to someone on German site MotorsportTotal.com who posted a link to thejudge13 and we’ve had over 50 new German visitors today from their site. Great work.

  1. Last week I did a couple of articles on Niki Lauda, suggesting there may be fireworks at Merceds F1 now he’s the big boss (a position he couldn’t help refering to on TV at the weekend I noticed). Niki’s inability to “suffer fools gladly” is legendary. So today, our favourite German publication Bilde has the following, “Schumi’s car builders are fired”. (I always put the link to prove the source, but be careful with any translation software – particularly verb tenses). Anyway Christian Danner RTL expert pundit and ex F1 driver of note (I’ll come back to this) says today that Niki Lauda needs to fire the designers of this years car. He suggests that after 9 months the car is performing like a Torro Rosso and heads must roll. He urges Niki the hatchetman on, “He is responsible to make the next decision. And the next decisions will be primarily personnel decisions”. RTL commentator Danner, a little bit like Mr. J Herbert for SKY, drove in Formula 1 over 4 years. 2 of those he was not classified with any points and had a career best P4 in USA 1989 when he also had his best season scoring a total of 4 points. WATCH OUT ROSS

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