Mercedes F1

Caterham: Is Gascoyne leaving? NY 2013 – No, maybe.., Lauda unveils Mercedes new ‘concept’ for 2013, DRS zone altered for BIC, Ecclestone gets $400m bill

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Daily News

Indian GP, Race Strategy: For a full track characteristics overview and Indian GP race strategy report, no one does it better than James Allen on his F1 News site (http://connect.jamesallenonf1.com). Includes: form guide, weather forecast, likely tyre perfomance, pit stop strategy, chance of safety car, start performance table and pit stop table plus comment from one of F1’s most experienced specialist observers.

DRS zone strategy: The FIA have made changes to the Buddh International Circuit DRS zones. As well as having the original zone that runs along the maximum distance of the start-finish straight, there is a second DRS zone that runs from Turn 3 to Turn 4 and this has been extended by 80 metres.

It appears the FIA are getting to grips with DRS zone lengths. The tracks where the racing is less exciting is where they have taken gambles on going long on the zone lengths. The extended zones this year have been predominantly after tight hairpins/very slow corners. (Canada, Valencia, Korea, India), so it could be the first zone in Abu Dhabi is also extended. If this is the case then Austin is also likely to have a fairly extensive zone on the long straight.

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BIC promoters only expecting half a crowd, Kingfisher employees to disrupt F1, Discord not Concorde in Paris, 1st Lap of COTA more F1 News

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FIA meeting today: Press release 18:05 GMT – “During a constructive meeting, Jean Todt, the FIA President, in co-operation with Bernie Ecclestone, the Commercial Rights Holder, has presented to all F1 Team Principals the new structure of governance, including the new conditions of entry for the Concorde Agreement, starting in 2013. All the participants in the meeting were encouraged to seek clarification which resulted in a fruitful and helpful debate on how the new structure would operate in 2013 and beyond. A further important step has been achieved today to secure the future of the F1 World Championship which should lead to a final settlement to be reached between the FIA, the Commercial Rights Holder and the Teams in the coming weeks. (FIA.com)

On the agenda. The FIA is insisting on only 6 teams, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Lotus to be part of the F1 Commision going forward. There were clarifications requested by the teams on the definition of customer cars and particularly the provision of 2014 engines. Renault has refused to increase the number of customers it supplies engines and with Cosworth up for sale this leaves Marrusia and HRT possibly without engines. Renault are objecting to the lack of competitiveness of these teams car designs, saying it is bad for their brand. A solution mooted is for them to buy a customer car from a larger team and then have an engine supplied.

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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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Force India: How the tower of cards could collapse

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Over the past few days I’ve been asked many times and seen people enquiring on various F1 websites as to how much is an F1 team worth. Of course the answer is simple, different teams are worth vastly different amounts. An F1 team is a business venture – registered with a legal identity independent of any rich owner and subject to the business regulations from the statutory authority where they are registered.

 Valuing a business

The way business ventures are valued is highly complex and sector/performance specific. There was old 3 times profit rule that was a fundamental when I studied Finance many years ago. Yet even this most simplistic valuation methodology is fraught with danger when you dig deeper. Is that profit before or after asset depreciation, asset goodwill, taxation, one off accounting entries of substance – I could go on..and on..and on…

I guess my favourite methodology which can be proved beyond doubt and its an old adage, which says “The value of something is best measured by how much someone is actually prepared to.”

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Whitmarsh: It was all about the money

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James Allen reports Martin Whitmarsh speaking today at a Vodafone phone in (say that after a few drinks) when discussed his feelings over losing Lewis Hamilton, his lack of regrets on the matter and the matter of Ferrari’s complaint to the FIA of the McLaren front wing being too flexible.

On the matter of Hamilton and sans regret, Whitmarsh words are, “The offer that we made was higher I believe than any driver in Formula 1 is currently receiving or will receive next year.”

Ok, thanks Martin that’s all cleared that up then… or does it?

I’ve read this carefully constructed sentiment a number of times over the past week and Whitmarsh has repeated it on a number of different occasions, not a single occasion merely reported differently by different sources.

“We made a very, very big financial offer, bigger than I believe any Formula One driver is enjoying today,” (Reuters)

And in a different interview reported in the Mail,

“‘We made a financial offer which is better than anyone in Formula One, other than Lewis himself, receives today, and that is something I am comfortable with.” (Daily Mail)

I try at times to resist my instincts, but after a semester of textual and literary criticism that has never been fruitfully employed in over 20 years, it’s time to dust off the text books.

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Lauda: Ross Brawn’s new boss

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In the last thejudge13 article, ‘Schauber or Ferrari’ we looked at how successful Michael has actually been this year, and why it would be very strange for him to quit driving now. It was this that puzzled me most during the breaking story from Eddie Jordan about Hamilton moving to Mercedes.

Surely after coming out of retirement and investing his wealth of experience to the development of the fledging Mercedes works team, why would he step aside for Hamilton, and surely after all the years together, Ross Brawn wouldn’t push him out. It was also reported the consolation for Michael was that he was to be offered a job in the senior management of the team.

But why has Schumacher been left out in the cold? James Allen has written an excellent piece today, which in brief suggests Schumacher just missed the boat. (link) James argues that Michael Schumacher felt his position was secure enough to delay decisions until October before making a commitment, and the Hamilton events simply overtook Schumacher’s timetable.

I seem to remember there being some talk in the summer of Michael being offered a 1 year contract by Mercedes taking them up to the new engine launch in 2014. Allegedly, Schumacher wanted 2 years to reap any benefits many expect the team to have from the new technology. Maybe it was this negotiation point that cost Schumacher his seat.

We then heard over the weekend that Niki Lauda has been given an ambassadorial role with Mercedes AMG F1. No mention again of Schumacher which appeared a little strange.

Tomorrow morning, Bild (A German newspaper) is running an article entitled, “Off with Schumacher, on with the Lauda cap”. I guess the headline looses a little in translation, but to many of us the rapid escalation of Niki Lauda’s profile during the last week has come somewhat from ‘left field’ – a sporting Americanism that means ‘has come from nowhere’. Enough of the translations and onwards and upwards.

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Lewis keeps Mercedes in F1

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Now the dust is settling following the Hamilton announcement, there are a number of threads to tidy up, but we’ll start with some housekeeping.

Firstly, forgive me for some of the Tabloid headlines which are presently being used and are designed to attract attention, but we are a new blog and it is a good way of grabbing readers who have not heard of us. I will get to the headline of this article shortly.

Also, there has been a certain amount of cynicism over whether we do in fact have access to ‘inside’ information at times, but this is not actually that important except from the fact it is helpful when trying to work out what will be the next talking point.

More fundamental to the articles being written is that we’re trying to address the issues and the questions the headline writers and mainstream F1 travelling media circus miss by chasing the breaking news.

This will hopefully mean that we will call things before the headline writers do. Feathers in the cap so far, Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC a week before it was announced. Further, today a number of high profile media commentators who travel with the F1 circus have now begun looking at why Lewis has actually left McLaren.

One example is Martin Brundle who said on the F1 show on Sky TV that if McLaren had really wanted to keep Lewis they could have done quite a lot more. Without using the word “pushed” he acknowledged McLaren had been feeling the need to move on from Lewis as much as Lewis did from McLaren. Others you will have seen have been saying similar things in reflection a day after the big announcement.

So that’s 2 strong predictions in the first 2 weeks of the blog – not too bad – but a weekly statistic that will be impossible to live up to I suspect.

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Ferrari in for Lewis Hamilton

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Ok. This may seem a bit out there, but I’ve heard a couple of whispers tonight that Ferrari and Lewis are having a conversation.

This of course goes against how we believe Ferrari operates. They predominantly [not always] have had a number 1 and number 2 driver and clearly Lewis would never accept being a number 2 to Fernando. So would Ferrari change their historic approach and have (at the start of the season at least) 2 equal drivers?

On the con side of the debate, McLaren and Lewis are still making noises about staying together, but they are starting to sound like a couple whose relationship has run stale and are about to break up. Really, it’s not that hard to agree terms that have publicly been on the table for many weeks – and we were led to believe by Lewis this would all be dealt with and put to bed during the Summer break.

So the fact that McLaren and Lewis have not yet done the deal adds credence to the view that they are too far apart in negotiations to get over the line. I’ve pointed out in earlier articles how aggressive McLaren and Ron Dennis have been in staking out the ground that Lewis is going to have to take a pay cut. It’s feels like it’s become too personal.

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