Jean Todt

“TestGate”: Have the FIA been played?

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“TestGate”: Games are afoot There are definitely games afoot in the intrigue over the ‘secret/private’ Pirelli test with Mercedes the week following the Spanish GP. This is unlikely to be a simple case of did or did not Mercedes break the rules. The backdrop to the story is as follows. Pirelli have been heavily criticised … Read more

‘Farcical FIA’ and ‘Steady Stewarding’

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No anti Melbourne sentiment here Unlike others in the media, I am not down on the trip that the Formula 1 fraternity  makes to begin the season in Australia. If Formula 1 wishes to claim it is the only truly global sport – as claimed by team principals in the FIA press conference – then … Read more

Daily News: Friday 15th March 2013

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Caterham appointment This is very interesting. Vitaly Petrov’s ex-manager Oksana Kosachenko has landed herself a job at Caterham this year as Commercial Director. A press release says, “She will be in charge of the acquisition of new commercial partners for the team and will attend races and team events in her new role which started in … Read more

Hartstein begins to “Let the world know what’s really going on with the medical side of the FIA”

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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.

Background Information

There are those of you who may not appreciate the history of this story, so I’ll recap in a couple of paragraph’s.

I had been watching the fans FOTA forum and writing some stuff for the blog – eyes glazed from the late night, I stumbled upon a twitter link to @f1doc – the twitter account of Gary Hartstein.Gary took over from Sid Watkins as the senior medical officer for the FIA and on Wednesday 14th November, just before the Austin GP weekend, he tweeted “Not sure about the ‘whys’ of the decision, but not down to me to know. Brazil will therefore be my 247th and last Formual 1 Grand Prix. It’s been a life changing experience and something I’ll never forget” (tj13 article)

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The mystery behind the sacking of FIA doctor – Gary Hartstein

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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.

FIA doctor sacked: In November, during the inaugural Austin Race the FIA doctor Gary Hartstein – successor to the legendary Sid Watkins – was dismissed by the FIA. thejudge13 reported a number of his tweets expressing bewilderment and the fact that he had no explanation for why this was happening. The FIA were then and have been silent since. (tj13 article)

Clearly Gary has been hurt and most upset by this and in December he resorted to an extraordinary and extended expression of this hurt and anger on twitter. The twitter explosion included the following, “I might launch a crusade to get some answers, or get my f***ing job back, or let the world know what’s really going on the medical side of the FIA”. (full exchange in tj13 article).

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McLaren record breaking year, Ecclestone says 19 races 2013, Todt referees Ecclestone-Ferrari spat, Webber calls for more European races, Texas pays Austin organisers $29m, Mercedes W03 – a space ship

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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: I was reminded yesterday by Kevin McCauley that there are new readers coming to the site all the time. There are some articles I have written since the launch of the site nearly 13 weeks ago that they may not be aware of. A lot of the articles though are part of the daily news I’m afraid, hence why I have put a search bar on the right hand side.

If you type “Mallya” into the search bar for example – all the articles that have that string “Mallya” within them (main body not just headings) will be presented for you. However, every few days I’ll put a complete feature from the past just above “On this day in F1” for those of you who missed them. Today’s archive article, “F1: Breeding ground for road car technology? No chance“.

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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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Just one more year: Why Red Bull are obsessed with controlling engine spend

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Todt reforms require unanimous consensus

As we know, the old structure of Technical and Sporting Working Groups proposing rules through a 70 per cent majority for ratification by a 26-man F1 Commission is being revamped.

Autosport reports that instead, a 18-strong ‘Strategy Working Group’ is being created – which will be made up of six team representatives (Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes, Williams and the next best in the constructors’), six FIA representatives and six representatives from Formula One Management.

This group will vote on rule changes that will be decided through a simple majority, and these will then be passed on to a trimmed 18-man F1 Commission.

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Quinghua in? Fernandes to step down? Austin Sherrifs unconcerned, Marko slates Webber, FIA needs $40m more, France GP – AGAIN!!! Turkey more likely in 2013, Wolff speaks about Senna,

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Marko critical of Webber: Our favourite German newspaper Bilde.de tells us today that Dr. Helmut Marko has pointed the finger at Mark Webber, after the Australian’s messy race in Abu Dhabi. at thejudge13 we think Webber was lucky not to be penalised for his move on Maldonado and his clash with Massa. After the race Webber himself admitted he should have stayed clear of the dueling Perez, DiResta and Grosjean and by not doing so ended his own race when he was too close to avoid the inevitable crash when it occurred.

Marco, not known for mincing his words says, “You can’t have more errors than that in one race. That was not a good day for him.” As if that’s not enough, Marco wants to make his opinion crystal clear telling us, “The start was no good, and the accidents were not good. It’s too bad, because it affects us in the constructors’ championship.” This is a slightly dramatic conclusion from Helmut as Red Bull will inevitably collect the 5 points they require to win the constructor’s title for the 3rd successive year.

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Stewards “fiddle while Rome burns”, Mercedes up budget for 2013 by 50m euros, Alonso ‘perfect’ qualifying, Ecclestone calls for F1 personnel to snitch on their own teams, Murdoch wants to own F1

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Red Bull mislead FIA: It appears from the statement released by the FIA, that Red Bull may have initially tried to mislead the stewards. The statement says, “The stewards heard from the team representatives and the driver and studied the telemetry evidence that showed the reason why the car was stopped. The stewards accepted the explanation and considered the incident as being a case of force majeure.”

“However a report was received from the technical delegate that showed during post qualifying scrutineering an insufficient quantity of fuel for sampling purposes.”

Naughty naughty

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