Niki Lauda

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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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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Lauda poking around Brackley, Expect double overtakes with 2 DRS zones, Alosno persists with denials, Marrusia in finaicial crisis, Alguesuari gets desperate, Sunsets Stats & Kimi too

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Lauda – what exactly is his job?: In a Q&A with Auto Motor und Sport, Niki explains his contribution to Mercedes. When asked how Mercedes can find 1.5s to match Red Bull when the drinks company spends 100m euro more he tells us, “We now have to analyze carefully whether the money factor plays a role, and if so what. I can say it but not yet, because I still go to school. This is part of the inventory.”

Remember Lauda said a couple of weeks ago that money had been wasted so far at Mercedes F1, and they needed to deliver more for less. Mmm.

Niki was asked how he could bring Mercedes to success. “The first part of this task is to take stock. I find myself just in the learning phase. That’s why I’m already some time been in the factory in Brackley and I will continue to do so regularly. It is important for me, along with Ross Brawn introduced to every aspect of the team, the car and the tools in the factory to be. Every time I go to Brackley, I get it. I need to understand the context of the processes, and then with my logic, direct access, which I, in common with Ross find a solution.”

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Lauda gives Brawn vote of confidence, Barichello wants back in F1, Lauda lectures Webber, Major sandstorm Abu Dhabi, F. India reject pay drivers

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Torro Rosso unchanged driver paring for 2013: It’s a busy day for news – my fingers can’t keep up. Anyway sacking both their drivers last year and then amusingly producing a fairly woeful car, it was inevitable that the Italian Red Bull team would announce no change in their driver line up for 2013. There’s not reallt a lot to say about this, other than what I’ve said already. If I can think of something to say I’ll add it later or if anyone else has ideas please feel free to comment. End of announcement!

FIA Press Conference Shedule: Abu Dhabi

DATE TIME GUEST
Thursday, Nov 01 1500 hrs Jenson Button (McLaren)
Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber)
Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
Vitaly Petrov (Caterham)
Charles Pic (Marussia)
Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)———————————
Friday, Nov 02 1900 hrs Ross Brawn (Mercedes)
Antonio Cuquerella (HRT)
Pat Fry (Ferrari)
Andrew Green (Force India)
Remi Taffin (Renault Sport F1)

Wow, Pat Fry – there isn’t a chance in hell the row over upgrades with Alonso and the near miss F1 2012 twittergate #3 won’t be mentioned. Force India appear to be turning up a week late, but Andrew Green predictably not be able to confirm anything about Nico’s replacement as the list of candidates is still growing. Petrov, Pic and Ricciardo will be the naughty boys on the back row. Hopefully someone will ask Ross about his relationship with ‘Lord Lauda’. Poor Antonio will be quizzed as to whether the cars have been to Kwik Fit for some new brakes. Kamui will need tissues as its likely to be his last appearance at such an event and most people won’t even know who Remi Taffin is (something to do with V6 2014 engines).

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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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Schumacher says he may leave Switzerland, Vijay ducks Indian GP press conference, Hungarian GP in negotiations, Honda no chance for 2014

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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.

Press Conference Lists for Indian GP: Friday lineup looks more exciting than Thursday. Kimi the only top driver – and to say he’s concise would be an understatement. Vijay Mallya is conspicuous by his absence as fears over mass Kingfisher staff demonstrations have grown. (Force India: How the tower of cards will collapse)

DATE TIME GUEST
Thursday, October 25 1500 hrs Nico Hulkenberg (Force India)
Narain Karthikeyan (HRT)
Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus)
Bruno Senna (Williams)
Jean–Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso)
Friday, October 26 1600 hrs Cyril Abiteboul (Caterham)
Eric Boullier (Lotus)
Stefano Domenicali (Ferrari)
Christian Horner (Red Bull)
Monisha Kaltenborn (Sauber)
Martin Whitmarsh (McLaren)
Saturday, October 27 Post Qualifying * Three fastest Drivers from Qualifying
Sunday, October 28 Post Race * First three finishing Drivers

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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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Monday Post Korea Blues: Mercedes woeful slide continues, BBC story panics Red Bull and more…

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Funny how from week to week the Monday morning feeling following and F1 weekend can be quite different. With Japan and Korea being back to back the contrast is stark. Last Monday, I was still buzzing from the Japanese GP. not that the battle for the win was great, but there was a lot of good racing down the pack, the fans were amazing, Kamui getting his podium at last before he loses his F1 seat, Grosjean’s latest incident…lots of stuff to think about and write about.

Today…Zzz…I’m struggling. Part of the reason is I think my post race thoughts posted yesterday for Korea was more comprehensive than the one from Japan, so there are fewer loose ends to tie up today. Another the reason is that the F1 circus is battling its way back from the remote part of S. Korea and today is a quiet news days. Any way let’s see what’s going on.

BBC – Old News and Wrong News

You can spot quiet news days, for example, today the BBC F1 story is a re-hash of something we have known about for months – Vettel/Ferrari possibly/maybe 2014. Even so, someone at Red Bull just told me the team have been forced into action and brought forward their post race debrief from Tuesday to today 3:30pm – to quash the rumours.

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Gangnam Style banned by Ecclestone, Marko dismisses “Lord Lauda”, Cracks in Ferrari unity….and other stuff…

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Its Thursday before race weekend, lots going on so today is bite sized links to the less reported comments with a few wry comments from me.

  1. Psy – the Korean pop star with one off world wide hit “Gangnum Style” is going to wave the chequered flag on Sunday. Yes I know this was announced yesterday but celebrities waving the chequered flag does not always work too well. Ask Pele about Brazil 2002. (YouTube link). For those of you without video capabilities, When Pele was asked to wave the chequered flag at the Brazilian Grand Prix it seemed a perfect PR opportunity, the country’s, if not the world’s, greatest footballer at one of its biggest sporting events. And, to be fair, it is not exactly a task burdened by onerous or complex rules. But, it seemed the organisers appeared to fail to explain the intricacies of Formula One to the great man, so when Michael Schumacher crossed the line to take the victory, followed home by brother Ralf, Pele was busy chatting with officials and forgot to show them the flag. Alerted to his mistake, he enthusiastically waved the flag at the next driver past, which happened to be Takuma Sato who was some two laps behind the winner, meaning technically he had won the race. “Pele is very little,” noted Schumacher. “I didn’t see the flag though, that’s the only thing I noticed.”
  2. Talking of Psy, whether he is a one hit wonder or not, he his HOT HOT HOT at the moment. The promoters of the Korean GP had a spoof video made with the “Gangnam style” soundtrack behind track workers dancing and clips of F1 action at the circuit. It was posted on YouTube and the video went viral worldwide. Of course FOM and Bernie’s lawyers spotted it and told YouTube to take it down as it was showing clips of copyright material. This morning my daughter who knows I’m connected to F1 but she shows no other interest in the sport – she asked me out of the blue, “Daddy where can we see the Gangnam video with your racing cars?” Trying to attract the youth to F1 Mr E? – FAIL!!!

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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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