Williams

Mercedes spend 772m euros on F1, Williams restructure the race team, Where’s Paddy? Firmly at McLaren for now, Jerez Running Order

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Mercedes Finances

Mercedes balance sheet for the year ended 2011 shows they have invested in total, 278m euros. Spending on the AMG F1 team was 144m euros that year spent from Brackley, however Brixworth where the engines are made had a cost explosion. Their 2011 spend was 134m euros, up over 50% on 2010.

This division of Mercedes, has been developing engines for the electric super sports car SLS AMG Electric Drive, the current KERS system and the turbocharged V6 engine for Formula in 2014.

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Proof McLaren were influenced in Perez selection by cash

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TJ13 News: Sorry about earlier post, the wordpress spirits refused to allow me to post my Scorpion Racing scornful review repeatedly??? Maybe I’ll sneak it in here – wink, wink – every other sentence.

Tomorrow we see the launch of a very exciting new ‘On this day’. I think you’re going to like  a lot. I’ve always enjoyed these kinds of features on other sites, but I tried to make it more contemporary with as many YouTube videos as possible when I was playing at it. However, time was always against me.

The dedicated TJ13 chroniclers will do an exceptional job, and if anyone knows how I can set up a second page and create a whole archive with a calendar research tool, please contact me on thejudge13@hotmail.co.uk

Further, the winner of the longest outstanding mini quiz I’ve run – about 24 hours to guess the Brabham 1992 with Hill driving and was purple – reader John Myburgh – is devising some kind of regular feature quiz to keep you scratching your heads.

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Ecclestone: Baa..who needs Concorde? Susie Wolff to ride upwards and onwards, Reveal #3

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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.

The other Wolff: Toto may be ‘blessing the rain down in Brackley’ now, but Mrs. Wolff is stepping up her profile at Williams. The team announced today she will be the first to drive the FW35 in straight line aero tests before the Barcelona test next month. Williams are of course not launching their 2013 car before Jerez.

Williams announced, “Susie will be the first to get behind the wheel of the FW35 when she drives the car at Idiada next month, and will do the majority of aerodynamic testing this season. Prior to joining the Williams F1 Team Susie spent seven seasons driving in DTM and was twice nominated for the prestigious BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award.”

Mike Coughlan (Technical Director) understandably eulogises, ‘’Susie has proved herself to be a valuable addition to our driver roster and her feedback during simulator sessions is second to none. As a result we will be stepping up her role this year and I’m looking forward to the progress we can make with Susie’s input in conjunction with that of Pastor and Valtteri.’’

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Opening Night ~ “F1 & The Musical Chairs”: Starring – Zetsche the Godfather, Lauda the Hatchet man, Toto the Wolff in sheep’s clothing, Fry the Mole, Jordan the Whistle Blower, Brawn as the ousted King and Paddy Lowe as the Ghost of Christmas to come

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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.

TJ13 internship: It has been suggested to me that I get some help with the site, as I can spend easily 6 hours some days reading, researching writing and honing the material. One area I thought of is the, ‘On this day’ feature. When I’m busy, this suffers and I believe some of you quite like it.

This could be a good project for under graduates studying journalism or media studies to include in their portfolio of work. Ideally a few helping hands would be good – and if we had 7, it would only be 1 day a week each would need to provide something. I can brief on the topic if necessary, and then the apprentice TJ13’s could go and find video and source information, write it up and use contemporary information to bring it relevant to the here and now. For someone who is feeling lethargic – they can have Feb 29th.

Anyway, if you or someone you know are up for this they can email thejudge13@hotmail.co.uk. Please – I am not sinking here and can manage for now without, so if you are a busy person and can’t commit fully I’d rather you not offer. Chasing up material that is late will be worse than just delivering it.

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Paddy Lowe off to join the massed ranks at Mercedes AMG F1

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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.

In England, our buses used to be run by the government (give me some leeway) and whilst they issued timetables to the minute where each of the 10,000’s of buses should be and when – as with most of 70’s Britain which was nicknamed ‘the sick man of Europe’ – efficiency was poor and nothing was where it should be – when it should have been there.

What would then happen is, having waited for 30 minutes longer than expected, a bus would arrive and directly behind it would be another and maybe a third. Our self deprecating view of British efficiency then spawned the phrase – ‘buses always come in 3’s’.

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Glock out of Marrusia, Wolff moves to Mercedes, Wolff and Lauda get 40% of Mercedes AMGF1, Adam Parr to return to Williams

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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.

From TJ13’s chambers: Having been stranded due to the UK’s inept capabilities in handling snow and then struck simultaneously by a telecoms service cut – NO INTERNET – I have finally made it back to the 21st century following a succesful rescue helicopter air lift by harness from TJ13 Towers.

So I will begin by covering the essentials and then expand the comments and threads of ideas later.

Wolff joins Mercedes: TJ13 has been suggesting all is not well at Williams for some time, the departure of Mark Gillan to ‘spend more time with his family’ as a story that has not yet run its full course. This time last year, Mr. Ecclestone was putting pressure on the historic British team to change their ways.

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Marussia – miss media opportunity, Grosjean wins ROC and a seat at Lotus, Mercedes knives appear, Sutil legal matters? Horner would’ve dirched Massa, Lewis been to Mercedes, Ex-F1 doctor rants on twitter, Williams and Gillan seperate

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thejudge13 archive: Here’s an article I wrote after trawling the southern US media prior to the inaugural Austin GP. To this date, I have not heard this reported anywhere else, yet you would think the sale of nearly 10% of F1 for $900m to the pensioners of North America might be of Interest to someone (LINK).

Marrusia – missed media opportunity: If you look on Marussiaf1team.com today, you’ll see a Christmas wish from Timo and John says, “”We are very proud of what we achieved in 2012 and we take away so many highlights, all of which point towards a development path we can have great confidence in. Thank you for sharing some fantastic experiences with us. Wishing you the very best of Christmases.”

No announcement of Timo’s partner for 2013, yet over the weekend, there have been some rumours emanating from Russian reporters. Joe Saward has some interesting insights on the Marussia car company today, “Marussia is a funny company. It took over a controlling interest in the Virgin F1 team around a year ago, but since then there has been virtually no word about the progress of the Marussia road cars”.

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Fernando – “Impossible to repeat my performance ever again”, Haug leaves Mercedes, Bianchi to Force India, Force India Ferrari engines 2014, Perez thinks he can be F1 champion, Support Kamui donations dramatically slow, Marko – Ferrari never get Vettel

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Alonso on all things F1: Yesterday Fernando was in the spanish city of Santander and here are the highlights of an interview he gave as reported in as.com.

“It will be impossible to start 2013 worse than this year, but Red Bull will still be favorites to start well. At the end of the year they found six or eight tenths on us and we must recover that in only two months. But the starting point will be better than last year, which is not difficult. There is always room for improvement, there are always things you can evolve. With the experience and technological capability that we have today, there are many factors that can be improved. But the driver is also important.”

This is true, and despite being Ferrari the team will be closer at the start of testing in Jerez in under 2 months time. My translating skills are not the best so I’ll paraphrase the next bit.

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Kamui tweets ‘another season’, Bottas Sponsor speaks out, Rolex replace Hublot, Ferrari Cartoon, Alonso the Samurai, How much f1 drivers earn, McLaren 2012 profits set to decline, Brawn – staff jigsaw complete

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Bottas Sponsor believes he’s getting value for money : The topic of pay drivers appears to be one I hear discussed all too regularly and maybe part of the reason for this is we are seeing F1 drivers come and go more quickly than in days gone by. I think there are only 11 drivers confirmed for 2013 that started the 2011 season.

But at times its hard to understand why the sponsors behind the drivers are prepared to pay millions of dollars to get their protoges an F1 seat. The man behind the Grove teams latest young star driver is Anders Antti Aarnio-Wihuri, chaiman and majority shareholder of WinPak Ltd.

WinPak area highly succesful international business, established in 1975 and they manufacture and distribute packaging materials and related packaging machines primarily for the packaging of perishable foods, beverages, and for use in health care applications.

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Ecclestone, Parr and the “Night of the long knives”

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A man speaks up

Remember back to the 3rd ever FOTA fans forum in Montreal 2011. Adam Parr, the then chairman of Williams, called for F1 to challenge Bernie Ecclestone over the direction of the sport. His basic premise was that Mr. E doesn’t really understand modern technology and is missing a significant number of opportunities to drive F1 revenue.

I think I heard someone else in the past few days suggests age was a factor mitigating F1’s CEO ability to operate competently. Parr said that night, ‘The way F1 is consumed is going to change over the next few years. There’s so much content you should be able to enjoy. Bernie has two or three cameras on every car. Then there are all the circuit cameras.

‘There’s an astonishing richness of material and we’re not really touching that at the moment.’ Assessing the way Ecclestone manages content, Parr added: ‘There are two things that Bernie thinks about. First, he likes to control the amount of material that’s available. He believes that rarity is an important characteristic of our sport.

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