This page will be updated throughout the day

If you are on twitter please press the tweet button at the bottom of the post. It helps grow our community because it places links to TJ13 in the very busy internet F1 highway that is #F1. That is why it is always in the daily title.

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Editor’s note (12:05)

2014F1 calendar: part 2 or 156 (12:07)

Vijay: Pot and Kettle (13:18)

Sauber: Defending the indefensible (14:13)

The F1 debt farce (16:06)

Lewis on the up(pers) (19:15)

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Editor’s note

Hi, I’m Andrew Huntley-Jacobs, I have the grandiose title of TJ13 chief editor… which entails being the coffee maker and general literary dogsbody behind much of the content which the TJ13 site produces. Seriously, I news spot, receive all the press releases and help TJ by drafting up the news stories for him to craft into the excellent pieces he produces. The connections he makes and how he develops the immediate story never ceases to amaze me – often in a few minutes.

The Judge is pretty busy at present, but is maintaining contact with us all daily from a variety of mobile devices from a variety of locations around the world. We will be getting a Judges Chambers post later in the week where he’ll let us know how August will be managed. Early indications are that from next week, daily news will be sporadic at best and we know many of you come to the site via a favourites button in your browser.

If you register with either the RSS feed or the site email, you will be able to see instantly new material is published, and not keep dropping by and being disappointed when nothing has been added. During August we have some pre-planned historic, social and technical articles we will be publishing which of course are not particularly time or breaking news sensitive.

The Judge is keen to continue to develop our community and a huge part of this has been the successful development of a number of writers. Some of whom have never written anything for public consumption before. We have started people writing small 150-200 word articles for the ‘On this day’ (OTD) feature. We provide the daily topics and the year they are from and help with everything from writing style to formatting.

Writing about F1 certainly makes you feel closer to the sport, as when The Judge has been away I have experienced this with the daily news. It may be you can only write an OTD feature once a week or on an occasional ad-hoc basis, but if you are interested please contact thejudge13@hotmail.co.uk.

Yesterday was an incredible day – and the daily news post has to date seen over 100 comments on the site, and this is another part vital to the development of our community. TJ tells me he had tweets from new people who have never seen us before and they were recommending us specifically to their friends because they could see the debate around the news and features is quite excellent.

The comments define an F1 site. There are sites out their like the F1Blog which have been going for years, and as a writer I greatly respect the work they do, however, their posts attract little debate and it is this in particular which adds to all our lives. Everyone has something to offer – even if it’s just thanking someone who has made a comment giving us new information – a quick ‘thank you for that’.

You don’t have to be an expert to have an opinion and TJ has from day one asked we all respect each other and so even if someone says something which appears from left field – there will be no brutal criticism or belittling of the new commentator.

I have been following Formula 1 for many years, and since becoming involved with TJ13 my knowledge and understanding has increased exponentially, from the news, features, history pieces along with TJ’s and everybody’s comments and the debates and analysis.

One last thing, if you are part of other sites where you comment, please when appropriate, put links in the comments to relevant articles or news here. The first 1,000 regular readers came to TJ13 mostly from the BBC and James Alllen. After the events of yesterday, I suspect the news will be a little more sparse so we can all catch our breath.

Good to speak with you all and keep up the great contributions which is what makes TJ13, IMHO, the best Formula 1 site around.

top

2014 F1 calendar: part 2 of 156

I did predict yesterday this would become a tortuous matter and even suggested – watch out Korea. Well here we go again. AMuS is reporting that Korea will disappear from the calendar for 2014. Apparently the organiser’s have run out of money and the regional state government is refusing to cover the losses after this year.

AFP news agency confirms this stating that the organiser “has lost money since it first hosted formula one in 2010, and local authorities are unwilling to cover losses”. I don’t think Mr. E will be giving them a freebie a la Germany 2013.

Further TJ13 did a number of pieces and we even had video footage shot from the site in New Jersey some months ago, One of the best during that week or so was from Daily News 2nd May (You can use the search bar on the right hand side of the page to perform keyword[s] searches).

It appears the scepticism TJ expressed was without good reason. No state funding and nobody willing to pay Bernie. There were brief rumours for a while that Ecclestone himself would fund the race – but why do that? Not only is he losing the hosting fee, but also it then becomes and additional cost.

‘Niki know all’ appears to have some inside information as he is on record telling ORF agency that New Jersey “didn’t happen this year because of a lack of money”, adding, “As far as I know, it’s already gone from the [2014] calendar”.

Here’s an idea – charge poor little Monaco a fee instead of giving it them for nothing – and use the money to fund a new F1 street circuit race each year to see if it’s viable.

So, today for 2014 we have India and Korea out, Sochi in, maybe Austria in too if anyone is allowed to go watch in the beautiful alpine setting – which of course must be protected from people going there to see it an ruining it, New Jersey is still a non-starter and there is a scuba diving community who have been smoking way to much of the local herbs saying,

Dive bum 1: “F1… come to Thailand… man…. or men…. “

Dive bum 2: “Hey man…. that’s sexists… saying man. You should be sayin – people”

Davie Bum 1: “Yeah man yous right….. F1 people…. COME…. ENJOY….yeah?”

Dive bum 2: “You too stoned to dive still? I hear there’s giant manta ray circling off the point”.

top

Vijay: Pot and kettle

Grandpappy Judge as you longer term readers will know, fed me on a diet of life advice when I was young and much of it was from pithy English sayings which contain kernels of truth. I remember when once complaining about something my sibbling had done to wrong me; a slow smile crept across his face and he said, “That’s appears to be the kettle calling the pot black”.

Clearly in his mind my protest was rather hypocrytical, as he deemed this action something I had done regularly to him.

Well folks, today we have a certain Indian businessman appears has been sent in to bat on behalf of the teams with the Indian Authorities. The matter: Tax.

Mallya tells ESPN, “Yes there is a problem with India’s tax authorities, but India’s tax authorities tend to be a very difficult bunch. They even launched a humongous tax claim on Vodafone and Nokia and other multi-national companies. This sort of standoff on taxes is nothing unusual.

Their logic is that there are 19 races and one race is India, therefore 1/19th of all revenue generated in Formula One is subject to Indian tax. From a narrow-minded, Indian tax man’s point of thinking maybe that is justifiable, but we need to sit down with them and engage with them and say, ‘Listen, this is not the only country that’s hosting an F1 race. There are other countries that have been hosting F1 races for decades and they don’t make the same demands. So how can you?’

“The Indian government on one side say they want India to be modern, vibrant country and want the global society and global industry and global sport to take notice of India and its potential. But the irrational behaviour by the taxman doesn’t support such a mission. So it’s a question of sitting around the table and hammering it out with them.”

The alliances and allegiances in F1 never cease to amaze me. Mallya is currently facing legal proceedings instigated by the Indian Tax authorities, for tax avoidance of $10’s of millions. Here’s an extract from “The Times of India” earlier this year. TJ13 did cover the matter today is still ongoing.

BANGALORE: In fresh trouble for the head of crisis-ridden Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya, the special court for economic offences here has issued summons to him on an income tax department criminal case for not remitting to government the tax deducted at source from salaries of its employees. The court’s action came after it took cognizance of the offence under sections 276B and 278B of the I-T Act, 1962, for not remitting Rs 74.94 crore deducted as TDS in 2009-10 fiscal and Rs 23.70 crore imposed as interest for not meeting the deadline stipulated for payment.