Alguesuari to get nod from Force India, Renault: Renault blame RB over fuel, Nicole up’s the pressure on Lewis, India voted 2nd worst race of the year

FIA to stamp out bad language: La Stampa reports the FIA are looking at sanctions for this behaviour. This follows the podium misdemeanours on Sunday and the revelations that teams use bad language in radio transmissions to prevent FOM TV transmitting them – thus keeping them secret.

The paper doesn’t tell us what is proposed, but its likely to be fines rather than grid penalties or points deductions.

Bahrain strips opposition of nationality: The Bahraini authorities today stripped 31 opposition figures of their Bahraini nationality in a move described by Amnesty International as “frightening and chilling”.

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

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.

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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

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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A Race with over 300 cars, Lotus developing 3 cars at once, Mallya’s license suspended, more F1 News….

Mallya: The judge13 has been following more closely than elsewhere the events unfolding that affect the Indian owner of Force India. Having sold a chunk of the Kingfisher empire this week, paid overdue airport dues and had the warrant for arrest withdrawn, Mallya has now had his airline license withdrawn. The suspension signalled the regulator’s lack of patience with Kingfisher after months of cancelled flights and staff walkouts, and marked a rare tough stance by the government against a high-profile corporate (Reuters)

The move had been widely expected after Kingfisher failed to respond properly to queries from the regulator regarding its ability to provide a “safe, efficient and reliable service”. The airline has never made a profit since its inception in 2004, and a well know airline commentator suggests it could take $1bn to turn Kingfisher Airlines around. (Force India: How the card tower will collapse)

Max Mosely: A very plausible and knowledgeable guest on the Sky F1 show admitted the expose of his by the News of the World of ‘spankgate’ weakened his hand in pushing through cost reforms.  In 2003 Mosely, then head of the FIA, cancelled the use of special qualifying cars and engines in a move to level the playing field for the competing F1 teams. He instigated a ‘parc ferme’ following qualifying that meant the teams could not change engines and other components designed to provide ultra 1 lap speed but not be capable of lasting the full race distance.

In 2008-9 Mosely was trying force the teams to agree to a cost cap on expenditure, and Ferrari in particular were refusing to comply, there were threats of a breakaway series and Moseley admits he should have faced them down as he did in 2003. The reason he gave for avoiding all out confrontation was that Williams and Ferrari in particular had supported Mosely during the highly embarrassing matter of ‘spankgate’ and he felt he owed them for this loyalty. So Max agreed not to stand for re-election and the fudged Resource Restriction Agreement was accepted, something Mosely now admits is not working.

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A motorsport ‘Social Revolution’ unique in F1 history.

Editors Note: I understand that more than half of the readers of thejudge13 are not UK-based, but this is worth considering wherever you are in the world.

Formula 1 attracts an audience of around 8% of the world’s population, if we are to believe FOM’s figures. Some 515m people watched F1 last year and its place amongst the privileged few place on the global stage of sporting events is now secure.

My love affair with F1 began over 30 years ago but my experience of watching the sport has been predominantly one of loneliness.  There are only 20 race events a year and most people are lucky if they can afford to attend one, unlike football fans who may attend 20 or more matches a season.

It has taken 3 wives for me to find one who is nearly as F1 passionate as I am, though I think her love of attending Jerez testing during the first week of February has much to do with the mid 20 degree temperatures, glorious sunshine, red wine and tapas.

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Montreal promoters go bust, Schumacher gives Mercedes 5 mins warning, Perez must stop fibbing, Kingfisher employee family suicide

It’s race weekend, and for those of you who have only joined us since Singapore, thejudge13, is often a little quieter over race weekends – as the focus of the F1 world is on reporting breaking news – who said what to who – who was fastest in which session, so Friday (or is it now Saturday in Japan) before a race is a good time to try to tie up any loose ends that are worthy of note, but not a full article.

A bit of housekeeping first.

Please, please leave comments to the articles, even if you think I’m talking rubbish – tell me. I’ve only had to moderate 1 comment so far for use of the f-word – it still got published but with “[mod]” replacing the offending  euphemism.

Also, if you enjoy thejudge13 follow us. This will help us further down the line get live F1 twitter/site guests to come and debate with us and answer our questions. You can follow on twitter and/or email. The buttons on the  vertical bar to the right of the screen. If you click for email, you will ONLY receive email when a new article is first published. Retweets and favourites are very good for getting us ranked higher in the busy twitter #F1.

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German Indictments imminent for Ecclestone

Today Suddeutsche.de reports the following.

The German Bank – Bayern LB – that once held the commercial rights to F1 and paid Bernie Ecclestone 41million Euro’s in commission to find a buyer – is looking to recover its money.

We now know this money actually just circulated on to Gerhard Gribkowsky, a board member of Bayern LB, who was apparently tasked by Ecclestone to ensure the bank sell to Mr. Ecclestone’s client – CVC. On conclusion of this deal Gibkowsky received an alleged $44m from for his troubles from Mr. Ecclestone but he is now serving nearly 9 years in a German jail for his part in the collusion. His conviction is for participating in bribery.

Bayern LB have applied to see the records of the Munich prosecutors who won the Gibkowsky conviction saying, “We are preparing everything to make possible damage claims.” The prosecutors are apparently more than inclined to offer these files up, however, it appears lawyers for Mr. Ecclestone have sought an injunction with the Munich District Court to prevent this.

This may not be the only troubles on the horizon for Mr. Ecclestone, as representatives of Ruth Kirch, widow of the late media tycoon Leo Kirch, also wish to lodge a half a billion dollar lawsuit against Mr. Ecclestone. Kirch used to be the main shareholder of the F1 commercial rights before entering into loan arrangements with Bayern LB offering the rights as collateral.

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Hello world!

It’s a rather sad and poignant day to launch my blog. Yet it is a day that demonstrates the awesome power of social media. This incredible power is to communicate to the world, or certainly those connected through social media across the world, news and information within seconds of it happening.

This was evident today when one of the renown F1 journalists tweeted this morning, “so sad to wake and hear about Sid…” of course referring to the death of Professor Sid Watkins. The first tweet I saw regarding Sid’s death was around 21:00 last night. It used to be the case that we the public would only hear about breaking news quite some time following the event. So for millions of F1 fans to have known that Sid had passed on to join Ayrton before a number of people closely connected with the F1 circus – would have been impossible a mere handful of years ago.

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