The #F1 Bar Exam: 8 August 2013

Welcome to another week of the TheJudge13 #F1 Bar Exam. Last week’s question(s): Can you name the driver, car, year and circuit at which the photo was taken. Can you also name the designer of the car and what the driving factor was for designing it. The answer(s) I was looking for was: The driver was Nikki Lauda … Read more

Victims of Circumstance: Nurburgring 2013

Brought to you by TJ13 Courtroom Reporter & Crime Analyst: Adam Macdonald. A puzzling weekend in many ways in Germany. A rapid response to a cameraman’s lucky escape after getting hit by a rogue Webber wheel, tyres that once again caused the technical department at Mercedes headaches, Rosberg not playing ball with the team orders … Read more

Castrol GP Predictor Summary – Nurburgring 2013

Brought to you by TJ13 Courtroom Reporter & Crime Analyst: Adam Macdonald. 9 down, and only 10 to go; we are almost into the second half of the season already.  Where has the time gone?  Anybody in a time warp would probably say little has changed though.  Vettel still leading the WDC and Alonso hot … Read more

Daily F1 News and Comment: Saturday 18th May 2013

This page will be updated throughout the day Nurburgring goes up for Sale The iconic motor racing circuit has been put up for sale. The Eiffel regional government which owns the facility is expecting to receive about £100m for the Formula 1 venue, the Nordschleife and associated facilities. The debts to be written of prior to … Read more

The Bar Exam: 28 February 2013

A big thank you to those taking part in last week’s Formula 1 Bar Exam.

The correct answer for last week’s Bar Exam was: Kyalami, South Africa where the last race held was in 1993 and won by Alain Prost in a Williams Renault. The other circuit was the Nordschleife last raced fully in formula 1 in 1976 and won by James hunt in the McLaren. As I did not make it clear that it should be the exact circuit I also accepted Nurburgring and Lewis Hamilton last won a race there in 2011. Well done to C-bahn and Wire2004 who got it 50% right in spotting Nordschleife/Nurburgring!

Read more

Perez taunts Di Resta on twitter, F1 Calendar 2013 to be finalised after the 1st race, De La Rosa back to McLren or Ferrari or Mercedes or Williams…, Gorgio Ascanelli returning to F1?

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.

Di Resta vs Perez: I posted a video a couple of days ago that showed Paul talking about various things F1 at the Autosport show (LINK). A number of other sites and print media wrote up his comments yesterday, but I was busy with my ‘Da Vinci Code’ story, buried in pages of Italian newsprint and blogs.

Anyway, here’s a few of the highlights. Di Resta revealed he held talks with McLaren over replacing Lewis. “I’m not going to give away too much, but yes, there were discussions,” Di Resta said. “Unfortunately in this sport now there’s a little bit more to it. There’s a commercial side and money’s tight. Perez has some good backing.”

Martin Whitmarsh has maintained all along that cash from Telmex owned by one of the world’s richest men – Carlos Slim – was absolutely nothing to do with the team’s decision when recruiting the young Mexican to replace Hamilton.

Read more

Ferrari announce… no launch date, Helmut Marko: Alonso too political, Nurburgring still not confirmed, Banks close to seizing Mallya’s assets, F1 car evolution

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 may be changing the way I publish articles, so that instead of updating the main daily post, 3-4 articles a day go out. If you don’t want to be bothered by an email each time you can ‘manage your subscription’ from within any of the emails you receive and set the frequency you desire to say ‘1 max per day’.

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.

2013 F1 calendar: Our favourite subject. At risk of getting reader DwilD started again, I’m afraid there is more to report. Having said that, I don’t remember a season in recent times where the number of issues on the calendar are yet subject to uncertainty.

Yesterday tj13 reported potential unrest in Bahrain. The week before Christmas we had the bizarre scenario of Barcelona claiming they knew nothing of the widely publicised bi-annual sharing arrangement with Valencia (LINK) and Valencia’s surprised response (LINK).

Read more

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

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“.

Read more

Nurburgring lifeline, Consistancy analysis, Vettel yellow flag storm brewing in Italy, Kingfisher Airlines finally finished, Champagne & Hot Dogs in Milton Keynes

Vote for thejudge13 at the Silverstone media awards. “Best F1 blogger” is the category if you think we are. (Link). It only takes about 1 minute to do. I believe we have 14 votes so far from thjudge13 readers.

Nurburgring: My favourite subject, the 2013 F1 calendar. It’s a week for lifelines, first HRT and now Nurburgring. To cut a long story short, in February the operators of the circuit, NAG, were given an eviction notice for non-payment of rent. Today Motorsport are reporting this matter is now ‘settled’ – how or by whom we don’t know.

2 weeks ago a spokesman for NAG said, “Formula 1 is no more at the Nurburgring”, discussions with Ecclestone were cancelled and all the other 2013 events were at risk.

Today, “Now we have to make progress in the talks with the Bernie Ecclestone toward a contract”, said Thomas Schmidt of NAG. I presume the operating company had been declared insolvent or bankrupt and the original contract is therefore no longer in force. Anyway, good luck lads – Bernie’s feeling a little down and unwanted at the moment, you may catch him in a rare moment of weakness.

Read more

American Pensioners buy 9% of F1, German GP Highly doubtful, FIA sack American chief doctor, FOTA forum a JOKE! T Rosso ditch Ferrari, SKY to replace FOM TV, Unser racing family dynasty born

thejudge13 readers: The power of the internet is amazing, and it has been 9 weeks today since the site first said Hello to the world, they sad day following the death of Sir Sid Watkins. In that time we’ve had visits from 121 countries including places you would never think have even heard of F1 like Bhutan, The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Swaziland and Nepal. Yesterday we had our 40,000th visit –  which I find staggering. Thank you all for supporting the effort that goes into producing this site.

Just to let you know a little about how the blog software I used works, it shows me every location (by country) from where people click on the site – but it gives me NO personal information at all. Even if you register for the email notification when a new article is published, I can’t access the list of people or emails inside the widget that manages this for me.

If you do leave a comment you are asked for an email address, however there is no way of knowing whether this is valid or not – and I can assure you there will be no junk mail sent out from thejudge13. So today I’m saying Hi to the people who will visit from Mauritius (I truly wish I were with you today as its cold and wet in the UK  😎  )  – if you want to just say hello back, please leave a comment at the bottom.

Over the winter there may not be thejudge13 articles every day, and I know many of you land on the home page each day when you visit. This is because thejudge13 is saved in your web browser as a favourite or you just type in http://www.thejudge13 into the URL. To save you clicking and typing each day when nothing is happening, why not register for the email service on the right hand side bar of the page at the top (max 2 articles a day) – or follow @thejudge13 on twitter (again click on the right blue twitter button).

On with the news…

Read more