Ron Dennis

Heikki 2013 chances slim, Perez burns his bridges, Mercedes abandon Coanda, Luca relinquishes political ambition

by

Editor’s note: Thank you for the many kind words about my rehab. I am on less hallucinogenic tablets now and am raring to go for the seasons finale.

In line with recent habit of identifying far flung thejudge13 readers, I want to say Hello to those of you from Malaysia. Say hello in the comments – we’re glad of your support.

 Heikki on 2013: thejudge13 reported yesterday that Heikki may be struggling for a drive in 2013. Having had a chat with someone who knows more than me, I revealed the analysis of Kovaleinen’s performance against his team-mate which was not great – and this in part is what teams do look at.

Read more

Austin GP Review

by

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.

Read more

Alonso unwisely refutes La Stampa, Kimi unhappy? Todt taunts Brawn, Pirelli want 8 compounds, Webber reprimanded by FIA

by

Alonso refutes La Stampa story: Fernando Alonso has dismissed as “not true” reports in the Italian press of a post-qualifying row with Ferrari Formula One team members in India last weekend. thejudge13 reported yesterday that the Turin paper, La Stampa newspaper claimed the Spaniard took exception to media comments by Ferrari’s British technical director Pat Fry, and threatened to publish a ‘tweet’ about a lack of aerodynamic progress since May this year. (LINK)

Alonso hit back on twitter, “The problem is when it is not true,” and added in Spanish “It’s not fair to your readers,” ending the exchange with “Forza Ferrari.”

The difficulty for many modern F1 watchers and in this case Fernando himself is they do not understand Ferrari and its history. If something over the years is published in La Stampa, it has been historically seen as sanctioned if not leaked by Ferrari because the Agnellis family who own the publication are very much part of the same family as Ferrari.

Read more

Ecclestone intervenes in Ferrari naval flag row, CVC appoint headhunters to find Ecclestone’s replacement, Mallya relieved at Forbes downgrade, German GP 2013 close to agreement

by

Ferrari won’t be drawn into their own controversy: Dominicali was asked at the team press conference about the political storm Ferrari have created by stating they will run the Italian military naval flag on their cars this weekend, he responded “”If you look behind in the past we have done a lot of initiatives, but there is nothing I want to get into specifically because this is not the place we should do it”. He was then asked whether the team would review their position he retorted, “”Honestly I don’t think it is a matter of this press conference to discuss this subject. If you have any questions, we have a press office.” Dominicali added, “”There is not any political intents or discussion – that is what is written.”

Indian news agencies quoted Syed Akbaruddin, an official spokesperson in the ministry of external affairs, as saying: “Using sporting events to promote cause which are not of a sporting nature is not in keeping with the spirit of sports.”

14:16 GMT The padrino has now entered the fray. We have a statement from Ferrari company president Luca di Montezemolo reported by news agency ANSA saying, “We only want to make a small contribution, with great respect for the Indian authorities, so that a solution might be found through dialogue.”

Read more

McLaren-Mercedes divorce and Cosworth need a new partner.

by

Even though the driver line up’s are mostly sorted for next year, I suspect there are a few exciting news stories yet to break. One of which I believe will be the split between Mercedes and McLaren.

History of the partnership

Having been out of F1 since 1954, Mercedes returned as an engine supplier in 1994, partnering with Sauber and then a year later began their 17 year relationship with McLaren. Since parting company with Honda in 1992, McLaren tried working with both Ford and Peugeot for 2 years with limited success. The 5 year relationship with Honda had delivered both WDC and WCC championships in 4 of those years – 8 titles in all and in just 5 years – 52 pole positions and 44 wins. In stark contrast Mercedes partnership with McLaren has delivered a mere 1 WCC (1998) and 3 WDC titles (Hakkinen 98,99 – Hamilton 08).

In 1999 Daimler-Chrysler (owner of Mercedes-Benz) bought 40% of the McLaren F1 team with Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh each retaining 30% and there was a shareholders agreements which locked Dennis and Ojjeh’s holding together so they could not be sold independently of one another. The arrangement followed a decision by DaimlerChrysler and McLaren Cars to jointly develop and produce the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren super sports car which was launched at the Frankfurt Motorshow in 2003 and was manufactured at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking and at the company’s second production factory in Portsmouth, where the SLR carbon fibre bodyshells are built. The programme was planned for 7 years and around 3500 cars and the last cars were completed by December 2009, although McLaren produced 25 limited edition run of cars in 2011 called the ‘McLaren Edition’.

Read more

Hamilton: The tipping point for Whitmarsh

by

It appears Martin Whitmarsh days may be numbered as Team Principle of McLaren Racing.

First a brief background of Martin and McLaren: He studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic attaining a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He joined British Aerospace and in his 9 years there, he had been promoted to Head of Manufacturing for the Hawk and Harrier airframes having a specialism in advanced composite materials.

He joined McLaren in 1989 as Head of Operations. On March 1st 2009, he assumed the role Head of McLaren Racing, when Ron Dennis stepped down to concentrate on developing McLaren automotive, the road car division.

Each of the 3 previous years under Whitmarsh, McLaren have trailed home Red Bull in the constructor’s championship. And whilst having built a reputation for being the best team during the season to advance their F1 car development, have also failed to deliver a World Driver’s Title in this period.

Whitmarsh clearly set his stall out to retain Lewis as a driver for the team at all costs to himself, but it seems obvious that he on Dennis were not on the same page (link to prev article). The whole twittergate and telemetry saga was quite ridiculous. I’m all for freedom in the social media of F1 personnel and with regards to the previous “WTF?” Lewis tweet – who cares?

The telemetry tweet was a completely different matter, a most serious breach of conduct imaginable. Lewis was criticising his own teams’ judgement call in public as well as embarrassing he whole team by publishing confidential internal documents. Ask any one of the senior team members how much they enjoyed the flood of fun poking taking texts they received from t other teams following Lewis’ action.

Yet Whitmarsh took no action. All we had was a slightly embarrassed, “we asked him to take that one down” comment and nothing else. No reprimand, no fine and I don’t think we even heard Lewis apologise in public for the very public embarrassment he caused.

Read more

Lewis had no choice. He was pushed.

by

The inevitable has happened! Nope, not Eddie Jordan being right again as he was 3 years ago when he called Schumacher’s return  – the inevitable is the angle of the stories which abound about Lewis Hamilton in the mainstream media.

“Hamilton is taking a big risk” (David Croft, Sky website).

Joe Saward, much respected long standing F1 writer says in his blog, “it will be a leap of great faith [Lewis has] in the German-owned operation, but may be a decision that the British youngster will one day regret”.

Martin Brundle tweets, “Statistics +gut feeling say Lewis has taken a big gamble”.

I could go on. These stories are the natural evolution from the stories written following the leak that Hamilton was in negotiations with Mercedes. The general themes of those articles back then were …that it was illogical to leave McLaren for Mercedes…surely Lewis would stay with a proven race winning team rather than take a risk…it’s all just negotiating rumours…it’s not about money.

Again, I could go on. Yet as I wrote last week (again getting lots of stick) I heard that Lewis was being pushed by McLaren. Of course no one was saying telling Lewis to “do one”, but the writing was on the wall in giant red letters 10m high.

Let’s also forget the “I heard” something (as I suggested in the last article) and look only into the scattered tea leaves.

Read more

Ferrari in for Lewis Hamilton

by

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.

Read more