Jackie Stewart

Daily News and Comment: Sunday 21st April

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This page will be updated throughout the day Bahraini Government are ‘stupid’ Credence must now be given to Il Padrino’s accusations that F1’s supremo is getting on in years and losing the grip on some of his faculties. Remarkably Ecclestone said on Saturday, “We believe the government were in a way really stupid to put … Read more

Day 3 Barcelona pre-season test: Sutil’s first F1 drive for 452 days, Romain is ‘born again’, Sauber secret ducting, Webber’s personal parking place, Red Bull doesn’t improve your manhood

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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… “.

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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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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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Buemi testing for Ferrari, Norbert to take to the stage, Lauda sole link between Daimler and AMG F1, Hulkenberg splits from manager, Berger clashes with Ecclestone over Austrian GP, Stewart thinks Mercedes should’ve kept Schumacher, Valsecchi to Lotus

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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.

thejudge13 archive: Here’s an interesting article I wrote the week after I returned from Monza, particularly in light of recent comments from Mr. Big. By the way that week thejudge13 had 242 reads  (LINK)

Ferrari  peek at Red Bull secrets: Blick, a swiss publication are running a story suggesting Buemi could be on his way to Ferrari. To be honest the article is a rambling useless piece of ‘imagine if’ writing suggesting all kinds of possible driver options for 2013/2014.

Yet, the nugget of the story is that after 22,000km in the Red Bull simulator, Ferrari are seriously considering signing Buemi as a test driver with bait that 2014 may be a chance for him when Massa is again out of contract. I’m sure Ferrari could and would try this – but would Buemi believe the ‘carrot’ was more than a mirage?

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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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F1 on an Oval track

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I’ve read a number of articles over the years on this subject matter – some for and some against the idea. With the inaugural F1 race in Austin upon us, I think its worth looking once again at the issues surrounding an F1 race on an oval circuit.

Could the engines cope?

Interestingly, in some of the older debates on this matter I have just re-read, the technology of the time often had the final say. Gerhard Berger commented on this about 12 years ago when he said that the modern F1 engine could not maintain 100% revs for more than about 20 to 30 seconds.

Yet in 2005, we saw the first of the ongoing engine regulation changes from the FIA to ensure they are more reliable, last longer and reduce costs. 10 years ago – the engines were probably the biggest restrictive factor preventing F1 racing on an oval because hardly any F1 cars would’ve finished the race.

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Marlboro McLaren becomes McLaren Nicorette, COTA business plan highly optimistic, Lewis leaving was all about the money, Austin Council votes to tax COTA, New F1 film for release in Austin

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Vodafone scale down sponsorship:  It has been widely rumoured that Vodafone will be pulling out of its 6 year relationship with McLaren at the end of 2013. This has been considered to be worth as much as $75m a year, which is stratospheric compared to the fee’s most sponsors of F1 teams pay. Joe Seward has done a great article on this today, the link is at the end if this section.

The points worthy of comment are, Glaxo Smith Klien (GSK) has been extending its relationship with McLaren, and in a big announcement in the summer the announced a “ground-breaking collaboration” which will apply McLaren’s winning expertise to the needs of GSK, the aim being to help it to function more efficiently with more efficient planning processes and better modelling tools to drive faster decision-making. This includes the construction of a learning facility called the ‘McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance’, which is under construction at McLaren’s Headquarters in Woking.they announcedis setting up.

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Mallya charges dropped, but problems just beginning, Sir Jack Stewart talks sexy (Ugh), F1 opportunity for Porsche, F1 News and Links…

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Mallya: Boss of stricken Kingfisher Airlines – has bounced cheque charges dropped (business today), and has paid off his arrears on the airport fees – presumably because he has raised some cash from selling a chunk of United Spirits to Diageo  (Mallya forced to sell). Before the champagne (Crystal we think) is cracked this may just be the beginning of Vijay’s problems, because everyone else who is owed money should have realised the way to get paid is to issue legal proceedings. Indian tax authorities who have not received the deducted tax deducted Kingfisher Airlines from their employees are beginning action – it may be some employees are technically liable themselves even thought the Mallya company has taken the money from them. (Economic Times). The Indian courts may find themselves very busy soon particularly if the author of “Is Vijay Mallya India’s worst businessman” is correct. (firstpost.com)

Mercedes: After being heavily criticised by Helmut Marco for recruiting 3 former team technical directors to head up sub-divisions of Mercedes F1 (link), it appears Ross Brawn has decided that he has enough his search for “art directors” and is looking for some “Indians” – less expensive candidates. Here is a link if you are an undergraduate and interested in taking a 1 year placement with the team. (Merc Grad Recruit). To be fair, an amazing opportunity.

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How teams will approach Singapore, Schumy’s first car a Ford Escort, Flavio to become apprentice ‘boss’, 1966 Singapore footage

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Here are the daily links that I think are worth reading or watching. I know often I want to read a story again and can’t remember the link, so hopefully – if I can master the software – this will provide not only the stories of interest for the day, but an archive of links for future reference. Some of it is just humourous and a bit of fun.

Analysis of how the teams will approach the Singapore GP. http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2012/09/how-the-f1-teams-will-approach-the-singapore-grand-prix/

Nico adamant Lewis not getting his seat. http://www.crash.net/f1/news/184113/1/rosberg_not_going_anywhere.html

Did you know there was a 1966 Singapore GP? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sVdEcGLgTk

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