Jenson Button

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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Kamui tweets ‘another season’, Bottas Sponsor speaks out, Rolex replace Hublot, Ferrari Cartoon, Alonso the Samurai, How much f1 drivers earn, McLaren 2012 profits set to decline, Brawn – staff jigsaw complete

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Bottas Sponsor believes he’s getting value for money : The topic of pay drivers appears to be one I hear discussed all too regularly and maybe part of the reason for this is we are seeing F1 drivers come and go more quickly than in days gone by. I think there are only 11 drivers confirmed for 2013 that started the 2011 season.

But at times its hard to understand why the sponsors behind the drivers are prepared to pay millions of dollars to get their protoges an F1 seat. The man behind the Grove teams latest young star driver is Anders Antti Aarnio-Wihuri, chaiman and majority shareholder of WinPak Ltd.

WinPak area highly succesful international business, established in 1975 and they manufacture and distribute packaging materials and related packaging machines primarily for the packaging of perishable foods, beverages, and for use in health care applications.

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Just days left for HRT, Post race bits, TV ratings, In depth analysis called for by Luca, Bernie’s days numbered, Vettel and the yellow light

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Following a slightly different type of race review – I did feel I little etherial when writing it – here’s a few bits and pieces of post race stuff to tidy up.

Post race bits and pieces

Alonso: I allude in the ‘epitaph’ in the race review my disappointment with both title contenders for their points scoring efforts after the race. Alonso,  “With a car that is slower than the others we can win a championship, with a car that is the same as the others we can win the championship with some races to go and with a car that is a lot slower than the others we fought until the last race”. If’s, buts and maybe’s don’t cut the mustard and it is not worthy of you Fernando to give us this spiel.

I just listened to that interview again and Alonso actually says, “With a kart that is…”, not quite the Prost reference to a ‘truck’ but not far away.

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Interlagos: Race review

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Predictable unpredictability

I have no intention of producing a detailed lap by lap, stop by stop report – the BBC and others have the resources to do that better than I do. Yet what has happened to F1 in the past few years? 6 of the last 8 WDC’s have been decided on the last race of the season.

This is the antithesis of what preceded when I almost stopped watching the sport after the borefest of Ferrari dominance from 1999-2005. Madmax Moseley changed something, and it was definitely for the better. My guess it was the beginning of engine restrictions in 2005 and then everything flowed from there.

@F1photographer was mocking those of us who have spent all week checking out weather forecast reports – because 1 hour before the race it was sunny. Having searched for and studied websites I didn’t know existed like some saddo trying to glean 3-4 day forecasts for the weekend, I didn’t take kindly to the picture man’s sneers. For example, The Brazilian ‘National Institute for space research’ is a most interesting proposition and a great read for those who suffer the ignominy of insomnia.

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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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Rules and Opportunism: Ferrari in Austin

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US Grand Prix attracts controversy

You have to smile. Why does the US Grand Prix attract regulatory controversy so. If you’ve been reading thejudge13 you’ll know during the build up to Austin we’ve reflected on the 2002 race where Schumacher fixed the finish and have regularly made reference to the 6 team race in 2005.

So Ferrari break a seal on Massa’s gear box giving him a 5 place grid penalty which moves Alonso forward 1 slot on the grid. The Spaniard of course qualified 9th and has already benefited from the Grosjean 5 place grid penalty. Much is being made about the penalty from starting off the racing line and at the time of writing this, the race has not begun.

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Lewis rude helmet, Perez under pressure, TR quick to blame drivers, F1 team bosses ‘bubble’ world,

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The deep south: London Times reporter tweeted the following, “Blimey. We hear gunshots and ask William our cabbie what they are aimed at. “People, man, people” he says and speeds up”.

Hotels: Still puzzling me, Austin tourist info tells us there are 30,000 hotel rooms city wide. At 2 per room that’s only 60,000 people and yet when I checked, there were many vacancies tonight.

Fans: COTA says there were 83,000 fans there today, which makes a total of around 148,000 so far – Silverstone levels.

Ferrari qualify as in Abu Dhabi: 7th and 9th again, except this time with Massa in front. Alonso is magnanimous and says his team mate did a better job than him. Bleak picture for Ferrari after Q3 (pic)

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Drivers to suffer points penalty, Massa criticises Pirelli, Protest planned for race day, A shame for Scumacher,

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I’ve published an extra news page today, because a lot of what is occurring is US time zone sensitive to add it to the one published UK time 2am. To add to that page would make it enormous and difficult for those who visit a few times to find the updates.

I had a good chat with a thejudge13 reader from Mauritius yesterday – there is no TV feed there so they have to watch on the internet. Anyway today here’s a shout out to those of you in Singapore. Say Hi if you wish.

FIA to bring in points system for drivers: Charlie Whiting, head of all things technical at the FIA (allegedly) has said today, “We would like a system that is at that similar to the one experienced by many holders of public road driving licenses. We will discuss this issue next Wednesday in Brazil with the teams”, says Charlie.

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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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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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