Has midsummer madness fallen on Formula 1 this week? Has the F1 media gone bonkers? Today there are reports everywhere of a supposed blackmail plot involving leading figures in the sport. But who has any real evidence that this was blackmail? Some may think that there is safety in numbers, because they have seen the same reports here, there and everywhere, but there is no such thing: more reports merely means more people to sue. Some say they have seen transcripts? Great. Could they produce them in a court of law? I doubt it. Particularly if the person who supposedly supplied them is the one taking legal action against them? If I were the man in question I’d be talking to lawyers everywhere, not to defend myself, by rather to attack all the media reports.
Who is going to stand up in court and say this is all true? Toto Wolff? I think not. Whatever it was that he may or may not have said, he will want the details to go away, not be raked up in the media again.
At the same time we have reports that F1 is in chaos as a result of the adventures of Mr E. chaos is absolutely the wrong word. Formula 1 is in a state of total inertia as everyone waits and watches for the next development…
I think the media needs to calm down a bit and remember that one can get seriously burned by writing things about people that cannot be proved…
joeblogsf1 
Sometimes, I wonder what sort of F1 press you follow Joe; I read 7 different sites, and none do any mentions to some of the stories that seem to outrage you every so often.
Not being critical of you, I just would really like to know where you pick those stories so I can laugh at their stupidity too myself!
You must be reading the right stuff!
I did a quick google and found a “story” on this posted by GMM.
Now where do I know that name from….?
I did a similar search and “The Judge13” featured. I wonder where I know that name from?
I propose we all exchange the “sites” we visit!!!! Discuss them and rate them, maybe that will help us eliminate the noise and impurities we get, that will save time and effort on keeping updated and trying to understand things that never happened, or the real way they happened….
good idea P.D’. for me:
– Joe’s blog of course, and the subsequent comments
– GP+ (I was in two minds about listing this here, but it is online and Autosport has a paid section)
– Will Buxton’s blog is a good read
– James Allen’s blog puts out a good volume of interesting stuff, but the comments section is a little frustrating to read so i normally just read the blog
– Pitpass (and before Joe rolls his eyes) for the features, particularly Mike Lawrence, Glen Crompton and Jo Soucek. Had some interesting comments recently re Pirelli-gate
– GP Today aggregator to check out what the uninformed world is spouting n the day, like what roscoe had for dinner
– Scarbs occasionally when it is mentioned on the above sites that there is an interesting anaytical piece
– Formula1.com for the press conference and session schedules/ transcripts, track layouts
– occasionally Benson on the Beeb, I will give a read
– slightly ashamedly i check in to Planetf1 for their regular “winners and losers” and “team mate wars” articles post-gp. there is some enjoyment to be had in tabloid fare after all! lol
I used to enjoy grandprix.com, but the quality has gone way downhilll, to the point where Maurice Hamilton no longer provides any features anymore and its appears to be just another regurgitator.
I also can’t seem to find where Peter Windsor’s blog went…
Any others?
As a general rule these are sites that are sensible. Will and James do most of the F1 races and are on the pace. Benson, Maurice and Windsor do a lot of races, but not all. Scarbs is well-connected. I don’t really know who PlanetF1 or GP Today are. Pitpass is what it is. There is no regular reporter, although we have seen Matt Coch a few times this year. Mike Lawrence and Christian Sylt never comes to Grands Prix, I don’t know anything about Glen Crompton and Jo Soucek. According to the Internet Coch, Crompton and Soucek are all based in Australia.
For me, it all comes down to two things; time and trust. My time, like many others, is limited. If I had several spare hours a day, sure; I’d trawl the net. OK, I’ve had a ‘glimpse’ at many of the main sites; James Allen; Peter Windsor, The Judge 13; Adam Cooper etc etc etc. JA’s ok – nice pics, features and vids. However, I always come back to Joe. Main reason is trust. It cuts through all the bullshit. You can trust it. It’s journalism of the highest quality, developed not over a few months, years, or seasons but decades. I also visit Peter Windsor’s site quite frequently. The photographic archive he has (and that he’s kindly willing to share) is simply staggering. The photos of Villeneuve last year (the 30th anniversary ) brought tears to the eyes. Very personal snapshots taken by Peter of Gilles at races, very informal – just like mates on holiday taking snaps of each other. Only recently, he shared a wonderful photo of Ayrton and FW taken (I think?) at the famous Donnington test – pre-FW’s accident. Both individuals are happy, smiling and look fit and healthy; it was a wonderful shot. So, there it is; JS & PW. Also, forgot to mention, it hasn’t escaped me that Joe, during the course of the season produces a simply staggering quantity of quality posts (for free let’s not forget), and that’s in addition to GP+. Like PW’s photos, staggering.
Somebody, I can’t remember who, once said that if you want to really know what’s going on in sports, don’t read the sports pages; read the business pages instead.
What are the business pages saying about the last two days’ events? Are they saying anything at all?
No
They are actually. The FT around here had a story about big B. being indicted. Of course, it didn’ have anything I didn’t read before… here.
I did a search and came up with the alleged names within seconds of reading your response to Joe’s Blog.
Try googling Toto Wolff blackmail. You get pages of the stuff, all the same. Please let us know which 7 sites you read.
Reading Joe’s last post I was half hoping that the man was Nick Fry or even Frank Williams. After googling for it it seems to be a bit of a non-event. Duh.
nothing particularly underground – my general rule of thumb is that if a piece hasn’t been touched by autosport then it’s likely not real/important
They are all copy and paste rip offs of here?
Seriously, though, this one made my day and year: total shark jumping for the copysites.
Several sites have kept their original articles, but removed their follow-up reports that named him – there’s an awful lot of now-dead links on twitter!
Interestingly, those that remain mention their source for the name as Bild’s SportsBild magazine – I’m not sure if it’s in the printed version of that mag, but the name certainly doesn’t seem to currently appear on SportsBild’s website.
Media circus of F1 are pathetic bunch that running out of gray matter to came up with good stories of the sport.
Watch the team principal and driver press conference, the questions asked more often than not are stupidly meaningless.
Could it be the 3 weeks off between races? idle hands & minds and all that.
Confirms what you were saying the other day!!
I read your article’s Joe because you don’t engage in BS like a lot of other F1 “journalists” and site’s do. I’m glad to see that you kill as many of the BS stories as you can.
I don’t read 7 sites, but the 5 I do did not cover this and I was only aware from Joe and then went and dug via Google to find it what was going on.
The media needs to calm down.. haha…
Pigs need to fly… I need to win the lottery… politicians need to tell the truth… etc., etc….
Commenters need to know when to shut up?
Ooops…
Mea . .
Do you remember any of your past rants against Dany Bahar or Flav? 😆
Have you learned the meaning of the word “rant”.
Was I wrong in either case?
rant is like argument, it unnecessarily take the pejorative. I only argue with whom I care about, e.g. . . this is why you get the /rant annotation, tongue in cheek, or used to, after any passionate argument brought by someone who knows their stuff.
What’s going on with Bahar v Malaysia these days?
I don’t know and I don’t care…
If F1 is not in a state of chaos, it should be.
When the indicted head of an organization is *not* forced to step down, it typically indicates a Wholly Corrupt enterprise.
That’s not necessarily the case here, but if the F1 fraternity and press believe this is much ado about nothing, they’ll have only themselves to blame for the repercussions. F1 insiders may be too close to realize this. They may believe the myth of Bernie’s invincibility too strongly to see the damage this will cause the sport.
This is not about Bernie, this is about the sport’s failure to take sensible, ethical, and proper actions in response to Bernie’s problems. Even if Bernie escapes a conviction, as it’s fair to assume he will, the fact that the sport at large did not – at a minimum – demand its leader take a sabbatical, will reinforce a perception of overall corruption within the sport.
If Bernie’s allowed to remain in charge while fighting this, that perception will have a fair dose of accuracy.
Now that I agree with.
Maybe the decay is better expressed as hysteria.
If you look at the rule changes and politics, and admittedly you can read whatever you like intro those teas leaves, there’s evidence I believe for thinking heads are not lately well screwed on. I mean, whatever happened to “feck it, let’s go racing?”.
I believe the status quo, a wibbly wobbly pile of jello status quo at that, is soon to go squish. Thing is, I reckon once the penny drops (or the pennies fall from heaven, puked up in disbursement from some godly trust) people in F1, at least those whose life it really is, will dust themselves down and say just that: “eff it, let’s go racing”, and all will be well again. Or at very least tons of fun. The problem only lies in the pseuds and hangers on and all too bright eyed wannabes, and such characters’ ability to make ill for who counts and has a heart. I despair at the situation, because frankly some innocents a\re going to be slaughtered. It will probably look very very ugly. But take the passion away from who lives and breathes F1? Nah. Nope. Not gonna happen. I’m short term pessimist, long term optimist.
I’m biting the and that feeds me, (though sometimes I think that’s a fetish thing they like too much) but adland and the corporates totally miss the raw joy of this racing, and try to bludgeon it into some kind of brand strategy or whatever rictus of the intellect they currently teach in marketqueering. It’s like sponsoring a bouncy castle when you’re a drawing pin company.
The pressures of ’25 unique F1 articles per day’.
It appears that some legal teams may have made a call or two as the inflammatory tales from yesterday have been toned down somewhat now. A brief google cache search shows the same story that was being regurgitated across the blogosphere.
We’ve all gotten used to silly season but I’d agree that this rumour is probably left in the gutter until it comes with some solid evidence.
CTRL^C . . . CTRL^P . .
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yeah, man, I am tired already! 🙂
As usual Joe is spot on! Lets get a handle on the hysteria!
Hysteria is a actual thing, I learned. Mate’s sister was miserable and depressed all a sudden, for years.. Deffo made worse by being poked and prodded all that time to no gain. Apparently some accident of nature had caused her body to produce cells the kind of the womb where they shouldn’t be, basically elsewhere, and they were kicking off hormones and all sorts of signals the rest of her system didn’t know what to do with. Delightful person, but who I know as a super intelligent witty grump was going through some rotten times in private.
This is just all so disapointing.
Today I went along to the F1 test. For the first time in ages my senses were assaulted by the intense furious majesty of these special men and their machines. I had the kind of goose pimple moments that I haven’t experienced for such a very long time. It took me back to the knot in my stomach excitement I felt as a younger me at the beginning of a race.
Someone once said that this was a sport for 2 hours a fortnight and a business the rest of the time (or words to that effect). I don’t know if I’m entitled to expect more from these people lucky enough to be guardians of the sport that I love.
It’s disappointing.
‘Someone once said that this was a sport for 2 hours a fortnight and a business the rest of the time’ (or words to that effect).
Sir FW I believe?
Yes
Enzo Ferrari also said something similar when asked about his infrequent visits to races.
I think the baddies, for wont better word, eventually always tap themselves out, if they are interloping in a genuine culture. I expect something of a rout, carefully choreographed and subtitled with legalese and corpodrivel, but not the true ones jumping ship. Let’s hope this is catharsis, not catastrophe.
Maybe we’ll find out whatever happened, we most probably won’t – so be it. What intrigues me most is the human interest part of this rumor. I mean, if I would like to vent steam about something, I’d make damn sure that I would be talking to someone that I’d trust completely… If the gist of the rumor is true, Wolff made a whopping error of judgement and/or was fooled completely.
In any case, I would imagine that he won’t share his thoughts again lightly…
“I think the media needs to calm down a bit and remember that one can get seriously burned by writing things about people that cannot be proved…”
My foreign friends, do the names George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin mean anything to you? Count your blessings; at least F1-media hysteria is only about a game, without ramifications that’ll affect your life.
Guess it is well timed to distract from Bernie’s little issue
I don’t believe there is a connection between the two stories.
The two stories both involve “blackmail.”
Joe maybe stop reading the f1 gutter press and stop promoting it even if unintentional cause most people it seems here were not even aware before you brought it up.
How can you possibly say that? How do you know what the thousands of visitors to the blog know or do not know? Just because they don’t leave comments does not mean they don’t appreciate the explanation of how the system works.
Obviously only based on the comments I read here. I’m sure every reader appreciates the efforts on your part to explain what is what. Just thought it was slightly funny that it in doing so you are prompting a search on those sites that spread the rubbish.
Not at all. I’m warning you what to avoid.
There seems to my mind to be a misconception that when Joe calls out the state of pretend journalism, he’s tooting his own horn. Well, try to think for a moment, there are other real journalists out there . . you know, for starters – shock, horror – GP+ is not a one man band. Heck, the very fact that there’s a reason to moan about the state of things is actually encouragement to look about, where you might be lucky to find other good writers. Presently, though, my only other reading visit is to a independent agglomeration of non – pro bloggers, which I think is the only non accredited attempt at providing a different view of F1. Certainly the only one whose writers are actually making the effort. Nothing in Joe’s “rants” (quotes only because everyone thinks a rant is a bad thing, these days) does anything but make you wonder and look about. Hardly the sort of thing a blatant self – promoter would do. Crazy, that someone cares that there should be *more* quality journalism in F1, when that would be competition!
Right, just had a look on the internets, and did found some god-awful reports on “blackmail” etc. wtf1.co.uk seems a lot more reliable compared to some “motorsports” sites…
Nursing a hangover today (except there’s no actual nurse…). Blackmail and bribery in F1, my goodness – what happened to all the fast cars and hot women? Or is that the wrong way around?
Nobody got burnt for writing crap and trying to pass it off as news. The only good thing to come off this phenomenon is that idiots tend to stick to those websites since they confirm their personal biases and some of us are left with outlets and sources that are relatively boring for these chest thumping loonies. Keep doing what you do. There’s 2 websites I get my news from, the other one being autosport. Primarily because they don’t allow comments.