FIA to create ‘electric F1’

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: A new series for electric cars, “Senna” in the US and more.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Motorsport chief on green mission (Financial Times)

“The FIA is looking at creating F1-style electric car racing series.”

How Red Bull simulate front-wing aeroelasticity (McCabism)

“It’s clear that Red Bull’s front wings are still flexing under load this year, so let’s dig a little bit deeper to try and understand what has been achieved here, and what the other teams need to do to respond.”

Via ScarbsF1

Start Chaos 2011 Le Mans Series at Le Castellet (YouTube)

Via Doctorvee

Vettel/Hamilton line-up ‘wouldn’t work’ (Autosport)

Christian Horner: “It’s difficult to see how you could have two drivers of Lewis and Sebastian’s calibre under one roof. There tends to be fireworks, as we saw with Fernando Alonso and Lewis. So we’re very happy with the line-up that we have and we’ll see how things evolve.”

Asif Kapadia on Twitter

“Breaking news! Senna is coming to the US! Just got off the phone with the NY distribution team – we are looking at a July release.”

Via the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app

US Grand Prix site on schedule (ESPN)

“The promoters of the United States Grand Prix say that construction on the new circuit is on schedule, despite clearing work only just being completed.”

Pedro de la Rosa on Twitter

“Second day testing in Istanbul, still raining and no chance for trying slicks.”

Via the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app

Australian Grand Prix video edit (F1)

Little new footage, still no sign of what happened to Nick Heidfeld.

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Birthday and Comment of the Day on the same day? It’s a first for Red Andy:

I would suggest that any overtake where all four wheels are over the white line is illegitimate and the driver needs to hand the position back, or else face a penalty. I don’t believe exceptions should be handed out because it’s the first lap of a race, for instance (e.g. Raikkonen at Spa in 2009) – if you pass by leaving the track, you hand back the place or you get a penalty.

I don’t know how this applies to the Vettel and Buemi passes pointed out earlier; it was too early for me to be watching that closely! But if all four wheels were off the track for either of those passes, it stands to reason that a penalty should be given.

A final point: the Sporting Regulations also suggest that forcing another driver off the track is a punishable offence. I believe this rule should be applied more readily when drivers force one another off the road to prevent an overtake (e.g. as Kubica did to Alonso last year at Silverstone). But that’s a slightly different story.
Red Andy

From the forum

If (or when) Ferrari drop Massa, who should take his place?

Site updates

Some users outside the UK running Chrome or Safari are still experiencing page load problems. The fix applied on Friday appears to have only worked temporarily. The problem is being looked into again.

If you wish to report a fault please get in touch by email and be sure to mention what browser you’re using and where you’re trying to access the site from.

Apologies to those of you affected by this problem. As a workaround you should find the site works fine if you switch to another browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Or, for that matter, move to the UK, but I appreciate that’s not practical for many of you and the weather here isn’t that great.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Andy Mail, matt88 and our Comment of the Day contributor Red Andy!

On this day in F1

The Malaysian Grand Prix was abandoned before the full race distance could be run on this day two years ago.

The combination of a late start time and heavy rain meant the race distance could not be completed. Jenson Button won but only scored half the available points.

Join in the 2011 F1 Fanatic Predictions Championship

There’s F1 races tickets DVDs and more to be won. Play for free by guessing the top five in each race.

Make your predictions for the Malaysian Grand Prix below. You can edit your predictions up to the deadline on Saturday:

Image © Williams/LAT

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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109 comments on “FIA to create ‘electric F1’”

  1. Isn’t the “From the Forum” the same as yesterday? Not being picky just thought maybe the Schumacher v Barrichello topic might’ve been good for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

    Anyway Christian Horner can shut his mouth, watching Lewis woop Vettel would be brilliant. I guess he wants to maintain a good gap between both drivers, he’s effectively said Mark isn’t a title contender there.

    1. Effectively Horner tells the world that Webber is their number two driver. Its not a surprise, but finally the lying is over. Was that so hard?

      (I’m not saying that its wrong or anything, but their ‘our drivers are equal’ blabbering while Vettel was clearly their favourite all along – even when its probably the right decision – was really annoying me.)

    2. Ye i think red bull just told the world who their number one is haha.

      1. He pretty much said thier driver line up works well bacause Webber is no match for Vettel.

        Hamilton was beating Vettel for most of last year in inferior equipment, and Webber was ahead of Vettel for most of the year in the same Equipment. check yourself first Horner

        1. Haha! But I think from Singapore 2010-onwards Vettel has been the class of the field. Hopefully Webber can find that pace again and start beating Vettel! :)

          1. I wonder if Webbers fractured shoulder had anything to do with that?

          2. I hope he does, its going to be a bit boring at the front if he doesn’t. And I would love to see Webber clinch the WDC from Vettel!

          3. Webber isn’t going to get anywhere near Vettel this season, well provided Vettel’s car doesn’t conk out every other race.

          4. @ Dane – even if the shoulder wasn’t just an excuse, he performed worse in Australia than in Japan or Brazil.

        2. Webber isn’t going to get anywhere near Vettel this season

          There’s been one race. The same thing happened last year, Webber was off the pace in Bahrain when Vettel dominated.

          I think it’ll be closer in the next few races.

          1. Maybe. Or maybe Webber and the Pirellis don’t mix, just like Massa didn’t work with last year’s Bridgestones. Or maybe Vettel’s really made a leap forward with the boost of confidence he got from winning the championship, and conversely Webber’s confidence took a massive hit. Psychology definitely plays a large role ind driver performance as we saw last year.

    3. Yeah seems it was one of those responses to a question where he calls upstairs to his brain and asks them to rush out something that vaguely makes sense so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about starting rumours of Hamilton coming to Red Bull..

      ..’Er Brain! Emergency response situation here.. I seem to have put my foot in it and don’t know what to say..’

      Well, I like to think so ;)

    4. When he refers to fireworks, I can’t help wonder if it would be from Vettel being outclassed in his own team. By his own logic it would be: Hamilton and Alonso never had a bust up, the war was always between Fernando and McLaren.

      Horner said last year the team would be built around Vettel, the implication has long been that Webber is the guy to come second and take points off rivals when Vettel can’t. You can bet if Vettel had been ahead of Webber for all of last year we would have seen some favouritism rather than risking it all down to the wire.

      1. I still think Abu Dhabi was too much of a risk. Sure it’s easy to say now they made the right choice leading up to Abu Dhabi but they were willing to lose points to Alonso to get Vettel back into it.

        Would they have done that with Webber? Hell no.

        1. There was a debate afterwards about how Red Bull were vindicated for not switching Webber and Vettel in Brazil, because otherwise Alonso would have been champion. But as Keith argued, the time for backing one driver had realistically come before then and they could have switched them in Japan too.

          And had Webber gone into Abu Dhabi only a point behind, would they have put him on the same strategy as Alonso, or would they have kept him out and gambled (correctly as it turned out)? I believe the latter.

          F1 is so unpredictable, but Red bull’s points strategy left them depending on something weird happening. But for a spinning Mercedes it would have cost them the world championship.

    5. its just such a good forum thread ;)

  2. I can’t read the article about the electric cars, but I think its a good idea. Mainly because I was thinking about something like that for a while already but also because that may take some pressure from F1 to get “”greener”” all the time. They’ll have their pet to play with and can leave F1 with sensible and reasonable ideas.

    1. Or F1 will look like an irrelevant dinosaur next to the futuristic/actually relevant Electric version.

      1. I don’t think so, the teams wouldn’t accept something that could rival F1. So if it goes through it will probably live somewhere below GP2 (GP2 is “F1 style” too, isn’t it?!) and get as much coverage in the media (so .. not much) but the FIA can say ‘lookie here, we are so eco’ (while keeping silent about where the electric power comes from, what the batteries are made of and how everything is being transported).

        If I’m wrong and the E1 (lets say thats its name) is everything F1 is and more and will mean the end of F1 as we know it, then I will apologize and probably watch E1 because in that case it would be pretty awesome and the F1 teams and drivers would move there aswell. But I doubt it for the moment.

        1. graham228221
          5th April 2011, 6:25

          I think it should be combined into one series. Have the regulated, standardised V4 engines from 2013 but also allow teams to choose a totally unregulated electric option if they wish.

          F1 is truly missing a trick, oil reached a record high price yesterday and our obsession with the black stuff can’t last forever. F1 could be leading the charge away from oil and saving the world!

          1. its technically impossible to have a racing series anything like F1 using batteries at the moment. The weight and size needs for the enormous amounts of energy needed in track racing is ridiculous. With the best commercially available batteries 10l of petrol would result in a battery that weights 180kgs (including the better efficiency of the electric drivetrain)

          2. RenM that’s why it would be a perfect thing for F1 to get onto. R&D guys in motor racing circles (particularly F1) work at an accelerated rate compared to everyone else in the automotive arena. If you had the brains of 20 F1 teams all trying to create the lightest, fastest, longest lasting electric vehicle around, to try and beat each you can be certain it wouldn’t taken them too long to work out how to make batteries lighter, more efficient and longer lasting.

          3. Graham – your idea of running in one series with the electrics being unregulated would be very good especially in the initial years. That way the technology would be developed much faster by the competitors for the motivation of getting a WDC or WCC – remember how optional KERS was jumped on by “innovators” McLaren and Ferrari? It would be something similar.

          4. F1 teams developing batteries wont speed anything up. The goals compared to a normal car are very different. It will probably result in a battery that can only be used for one race. Very economical.
            Car companies are already spending several hundred millions on battery research. F1 teams wont make a huge difference.

          5. graham228221
            5th April 2011, 20:30

            Just imagine the first time an electric F1 car overtakes a petrol driven car on track – it would be a real spine-tingling paradigm shift, and it’s a real shame we’ll never see it :(

        2. 1st of all – the lack of sound: how would E1 sound? The whine of the motors would be nothing near the F1 engines unless they are artificially amplified.

          2nd – if the carbon footprint is to be minimized, E1 has to be some sort of hybrid eg Biodiesel/KERS or Ethanol/KERS or Gas Turbine/KERS or it goes pure electric as solar or hydrogen fuel-cell powered machines. The solar powered model has been tried and more or less failed. Which brings to light the problem with these futuristic fuel options – they may not be able to put up a credible racing formula.

          But truth be told, as fossil fuels become more expensive, its just a matter of time before they are replaced by these new options.

          1. The environmental footprint of biodiesel is considerably worse than a modern oil-fired power station.

            But never mind – it’s made from plants, it must be good, right? ;)

      2. The New Hope
        5th April 2011, 4:58

        Good luck with that. Just think of all of the fossil and nuclear fuels needed to provide all of that electricity. Sounds really “green” to me.

        1. graham228221
          5th April 2011, 6:27

          Good point Jeremy Clarkson!

    2. Its pretty interesting, if you look at James Allens site, he was one of the two people doing that interview and writes a bit about it as well.

      1. i highly doubt any team will spend on researching a new tech when the petrol engine is all set up this well. if itz kept optional, then i doubt anyone will even consider that as an option.

        1. Your comment just does not make sense, that is not if you actually read the article or my comment.

          This is not about F1 turning electric, this is about the EU and the FIA working to create some form of racing with electrical cars.

          Certainly some teams would be inclined to keep in touch, help or lend their ressources to that kind of racing. That way it might help creat valid tools for more efficiency and performance boost for F1 in time.

          1. I’ve been racing a Tesla in GT5 recently.

            It’s rubbish. :hehe:

  3. That start at Paul Ricard reminds me of some of the utter screw-ups with the safety car that we’ve seen in V8 Supercars. One time, a group of cars came out of the pits at speed, but the safety car had stopped on the circuit on the far side of a blind crest and didn’t pick the leader up …

  4. electric F1…. wow, just wow.

    1. imagine the noise……

      1. shame the noise would breach the circuit policy at some places lol, locals might complain

      2. everyone would be imagining noise…

  5. I knew it was only a matter of time before they would release this about “electric F1”.

    They say that they’re looking into it to seem greener. But they won’t (or at least shouldn’t) change it until the technology is efficient enough to use, and still create the same sort of power.

    1. If it works in a Prius it’ll work in F1. =)

      1. Actually the idea is rather that while it currently does not work in F1 a series like that might help get the tech. ready through a special competition element to spur the engineers into fine tuning it.

        It might then be used in the future when it actually offers a real advantage on track.

        I like that. Bring these things to F1 only when they have proven to be sensible for enhancing performance. And the F1 teams could still be involved, if they want they can choose to run in this series, or support teams to profit from the developments as soon as that makes sense.

    2. Megawatt Herring
      5th April 2011, 1:14

      I think the opposite, a competitive sport should push the development faster than it’s current level.

      However I’m still waiting on my jet engine car series :(

    3. If the cars are fast enough, they should race in a “two tier” F1, on the same day and the same race track.

      Different categories and rules, but give the exposure and therefore sponsorship and ivestment a chance.

      1. The tesla could be the safety car!

    4. Let’s look as the Prius. As Toyota mentioned a few times when they backed away from F1, their roadcars have more sophisticated hybrid technology than their F1 car. We don’t need and E1 series, we need an unbridled hybrid powertrain in F1, And it is actually the most road relevant form of it. No more of this X seconds per lap push-to-pass nonsense. Let teams develop a full on system, one that will look like the powertrains in actual high tech road cars, from the Prius to the Porsche 918.

  6. I’m in the UK keith and get the problem. I’ve had to refresh alot of pages several times!

    1. Or, for that matter, move to the UK, but I appreciate that’s not practical for many of you and the weather here isn’t that great.

      The weather’s no better here in the Seattle area, and if djdaveyp87 is any measure, that won’t even fix the problem.

      The site seems to be loading just fine for me now, just as it was at this time yesterday. Seems to be an intermittent problem since the initial fix. Hopefully it will continue to work fine from here on… Fingers crossed.

      1. I’m still having problems, although not as bad as yesterday. It seems to peak at about 5-6pm GMT where the page just doesn’t want to load at all.

        1. I’m noticing the same sort of thing. The early hours 0:00-6:00 GMT, which is my evening, it loads up fine, then when I try and get on here in the morning to midday here (afternoon-evening GMT) it seems to have trouble loading again. It’s very strange.

    2. I bet you’re using Google Chrome. It doesn’t seem to like this site.

  7. I’m getting pretty sick of reading about this Senna film! It’s been an almost everpresent story on the internet for the last 6 months, presumably because of the way they’ve structured its release through the season. I wish they had’ve just released it simultaneously.

    1. Yes, it’s really annoying

      I’m sure I could find it on the internet, but didn’t bother

      But I’m also sure that are less patient would have seen it by now through other means

      I really don’t understand why they decided to release it like that.

      1. Yea its getting tiring. Yea this guy was a great driver–we get it. It’s almost as if this movie is some sort of precious gemstone making the rounds through different countries, eliciting school-girl reactions from various pundits.

    2. Sush Meerkat
      5th April 2011, 8:53

      You make an excellent point Ned, I’m actually so sick of this marketing strategy that I don’t want to watch the film anymore.

      Whose idea was it to market it this way?, or is it just F1 websites that are doing it?.

      I’m going to do a social experiment and ask all my non f1 loving friends (thats pretty much all of them) and see who knows about this film.

      I’m guessing that no one outside hardcore F1 fans know about it, which means all thats happening is F1 fans are getting saturated with the exact same info over and over and over again.

  8. I was taking a look at that McCabism blog Keith posted and I saw this gem: http://mccabism.blogspot.com/2011/03/tom-paulin-on-2011-f1-grid.html

    I leiked the McLaren. It spoke to me of an audacious and extravagant spirit. The sidepods made me think of Joyce at his finest, a willingness to find stark beauty in bleak alphabetic form. It has a wonderful anarchy to it. It’s operatic, lyrical, and poetic; I mean it’s complete nonsense, but none the worse for it.

    The Ferrari, however, I saw as insipid and cliched in comparison, as if the team had asked themselves a series of questions so dull that they’d fallen into a narcoleptic coma before completing the design.

    Hahaha!

    1. LOL, but to be fair, only a couple of weeks ago it looked like the boring car was the better job done.

  9. that’s what you get with a rolling 2-abreast start. note that the carnage in the back had nothing to do with the damn SC staying out! this is pretty symbolic of the jumbled mess sports car racing has become. at least they have green lights to start the race.

    1. Nothing to do with the rolling start… From the comments, it would seem a car stalled on track and so the safety car stayed out and the race started under waved yellows. The crash was a product of confusion from waved yellows/safety car combined with green lights. Look at the person in 5th moving to the left and gaining a couple of places before realising the SC was still out. In a similar move further back there would have been a car in front instead of empty space which caused the collision.

      1. Yeah, basically the cars at the front could see that the pace car was still there, but the cars at the back couldn’t see that, only the green lights, which to them means go. All of a sudden the back of the grid all drove simultaneously into the front of the grid… Whoops!

        1. Exaclty. Wow a major screw up. I just hope it was largely damaged property and egos, no serious injury.

  10. I am thrilled Senna is finally coming out in the US!

    1. Me too, I’ll definitely be catching that on opening day assuming it makes it to Seattle.

  11. Birthday and Comment of the Day on the same day? It’s a first for Red Andy

    Nah! :P

    1. I think Steph also scored a COTD on her birthday too, if I remember correctly. I’d check if I knew when her birthday was! :P

      1. LOL, she’ll get you for that Damon!

        I must say I fully agree with Red Andy’s comment.

      2. I did and PM also scored one on his birthday I believe.

        Fantastic comment Andy and very glad you got it!

        1. Is this like the Grand Chelem of the F1 Fanatic world?

    2. Well, I wish Red Andy a very nice birthday in any case. And the same to Matt88 and Andy Mail

      1. Yes, happy birthdays all around.

        1. thank you guys! ;)
          and happy birthday to Red Andy and Andy Mail as well.

    3. Happy Birthdays all round.

      Agree with all of the COTD apart from the Kubica thing. I think you’re allowed to force them to either slow down or go off if you have the corner, which is what Alonso contended at the time and Button argued in Australia. Both times they were wrong, in my view.

    4. My only COTD to date also came on my birthday (https://www.racefans.net/2010/07/19/f1-fanatic-round-up-1972010/), although this was omitted from the round-up – my comment seems to have disappeared from the “What was the F1 news on my birthday?” thread, despite the steady stream of e-mail notifications about subsequent replies to the thread suggesting the contrary!

  12. Anyone have a translation for the McCabism article?
    In English preferably.

    1. I think that article doesn’t answer much. It tells us a bit about the software involved (calculation how applied pressure deforms a part then calculates how the application of the pressure changes due to deformation and how that new pressure application deforms the part and so on until getting to a full simulation of a predetermined range in which the parts will have to work, just not an abstract model but a very very realistic and complex one (complex because it involves billions of particles, not because the calcuation is very difficult once you chose the preset you want to go by)). (I only read across it so excuse me if I missed something revolutionary.)

      But the only way that article could explain why RB is the only team to have flexing body parts is, if it indicates that RB has a superior software to the other top teams. And frankly, I doubt that. And the method that is described is not the only one to go about this problem, so just because the other teams may use differend models doesn’t mean theirs are worse. So I still do not see a good explanation for the fact that RB has the flexing parts and the other teams don’t.

      But in the end, often times the easiest solution is the one that fits, maybe RB simply has superior software at the moment.

    2. I agree with bananarama. Having the ability to accurately calculate a dynamically changing downforce with a dynamically flexing front wing is not / was not the silver bullet Red Bull found. The software package may also be able to accurately reflect behavior as more flexing body parts are added to the system.

      The author almost hit on what we all wanted to know – exactly how does Red Bull actually produce a front wing that has repeatable, variable-but-nonlinear front wing flex that stays within elastic deformation range without moving into the plastic range at full flex(?).

    3. Agreed, my head is spinning!

  13. Malaysia 2009- a great race ruined…

    1. absolutely agree. FIA & FOM never seems to learn from mistake.

    2. exactly, the race was so good before the rain.

  14. F1 Electric? What is that?

    What was that all about in the Le Mans race?

    I do agree Vettel & Hamilton will show us another Prost Senna era but I don’t want them in the same team. Let them race & fight from two different cars.

    1. The New Hope
      5th April 2011, 5:01

      I believe they said the electric F1 will be Lewis and Jensen riding on Roombas.

  15. I’d move to the UK right now to avoid using Internet Explorer again.

    Enough said :P

  16. Little new footage, still no sign of what happened to Nick Heidfeld.

    Could you see the damage on TV too? Every time he came past me, I wondered where he could have obtained that wound in his sidepod, as there had not been any noticeable contact into turn 1 on the first lap. But at least the video shows what happened to Barrichello at turn 3 on lap 1 – as the FOM feed had only shown the aftermath (Barrichello crawling through the gravel). He really wasn’t having much luck down there at turn 3, was he? It reminds me of Raikkonen in 2008! :P

    1. I saw it only in pictures after the race.
      No sign of it on TV.
      It is supposed to be damage from the 2nd or 3rd corner from Buemi’s wheel.
      FOM did mis a lot of the action again, didn’t they.

  17. I cannot wait for the Senna Movie…
    Give me a date for the Senna Movie…
    Even though I’m in Canada I’d travel to the US to see it…
    Just put me out of my misery and give me a date already…
    I cannot wait for the Senna Movie…
    urgh.
    Requests directed to those in charge, not Keith

  18. ElectricF1? Great and please take KERS with you.
    Sure they will have refueling/recharging. A pit stop may last from 2 – 8 hrs. Unless they are alllowed to install fresh batteries every stop, or the races are run over much shorter distances.

  19. When I first saw the news about ElectricF1, as an electronics engineer (retired), I did a few, back of the envelope calculations. Using the most optimistic figures for efficiency and doubling the present rate (~20%) of energy recovery (KERS). I came to the conclusion that anything better that F3, 20 minute race with equivalent of 150kW (200 hp) engine is about the best we can hope for in the near future.

    1. Actually that does not sound too bad for a start.
      Put it in the side program for some other racing and people might be fascinated for the largest part of those 20 minutes and watch it. At first look 150kW does not sound much, Its still double my road car which has 2x the weight. With 600 kg cars it will still be racing.

  20. Totally with COTD. I understand that’s the current rule anyway?

    Dodgy words from Horner, I hope he’s referring to having two hyoung hungry WDC’s in his car…at least that’s what he will tell us.

    Going to read that electric style F1 link now.

  21. Electric power could actually work in F1. In road cars it has 2 big drawbacks. First thing is that the batteries are very heavy. This wouldn’t change, but since the rest of F1 cars is very light the total weight probably wouldn’t change a lot. And secondly is the range. But since a F1 race is only about 300km this wouldn’t be a problem either.

    But I would rather see F1 looking into other green technologies if they have to. Because the electric energy has to be generated in some way. And since nuclear power plants are bad (they melt down all the damn time, just look at the one in Japan (sarcasm!)), they would probably use a power plant run on *tadaa* coal or something, which is still bad for the environment and will also run out.

    1. I know where you’re coming from. Electricity is not the answer but it is the better of two evils.

      1. But given our current dependency on fossil fuels, the electricity requirements if we went electric would be truly immense, beyond any capacity to be generated from renewables even if we turned the country into a Crazy Golf park with all those turbines. So we’d have to depend on fossil fuels and nuclear reactors and by the law of averages one of them is going to cause a big accident one day.

        I know they have hopes for fusion reactors but there’s been little progress in the last ten years (we were supposed to have one working by now).

        The only thing that really worries me is that we need oil for so many other things, like plastic. If we stopped using petrol we’d still be using it up at an unsustainable rate.

        1. Well yea, fair point. The problem is, we set the precedent with petrol and other liquids a century ago.

          There needs to be a genuine and real push at recycling. Once we burn fuels, they’re gone, plastic we have another chance.

  22. Interesting insight on the FT link. Watching F1 develop is going to be fascinating regardless of right or wrong.

  23. Thanks Kieth for fixing the problem, F1Fanatic loads much faster now.

  24. Electric F1? No thanks. It will fall well below the hopes for it simply for not being F1. It’ll be on Eurosport or some cable channel which will kill any audience and by the simple fact that it won’t have F1 drivers in it a lot of people won’t be interested, that’s if they’re not put off by it being a bit naff. No wonder Todt wants it to follow F1, because attendances would be comparatively slim otherwise.

    The planet is not going to be saved by the technological approach to global warming we currently have. The human race could go extinct overnight and we’d still have global warming, the damage has already been done. Even if our leaders got behind geoengineering and it worked, even with all these fancy technologies it’d still start all over again. The simple truth is there are just too many people not to make a direct and indirect impact on the planet’s ecosystem even in a “carbon neutral” world. But you can’t sell population control to voters, so this is what we have.

  25. The Quiet Formula…

    Then again, may of us who watch Star Sports already turn off the volume during a race to avoid Steve Slater’s comments.

    I get more intelligent info off the “Live Blog” than I ever do from that whole cast of tongue twisted monkeys at Star.

    I do however pardon Gary Anderson, he is the one positive thing there.

  26. I’ve got electric F1 in my living room. It’s called Scalextric. It’s awesome, but I don’t think it will scale up too well.

    1. Maybe nuclear powered F1 cars…Mitsubishi Electric is a sponsor of Sauber. I can see it now.

      Day-glow Orange and Yellow flag for radiation leak on the track… Run wide on turn four Lewis, it’s on the racing line.

  27. Electric F1.. Awesome!!

    But what superlative could you use? It’s…. Amplified!

    1. Electric Six would surely be the BBC’s coverage theme song? ;)

    2. Hummmmm, Hummmmm, Hummmmm, Hummmmm, hum, hum hum, hummmmmm. Lewis, turn off the nine volt ballast, it’s causing a bit of under steer. That was a shocking lap… can you feel the energy, the crowd is electrified!

  28. It’s difficult to see how you could have two drivers of Lewis and Sebastian’s calibre under one roof. There tends to be fireworks, as we saw with Fernando Alonso and Lewis. So we’re very happy with the line-up that we have and we’ll see how things evolve.

    This is the definite proof that Chris doesn’t rate Webber.

    1. Webber did sort of lose it at the end of 2010.

    1. I thought you meant the philosopher, then I realised you did ;)

  29. A link to McCabism. An excellent site I can highly recommend.

  30. Regarding Electric F1, I think they should not add any artificial sound. Although I would love it if the cars would be equiped with a microphone and big speakers.

    How cool would it be to hear them roaring past:
    “I’m faster”
    “Massive frontlocking”
    “I’m having traffic here, come on, can’t you see this will keep us out of 107% again!”
    “He should be black flagged”
    “My hair, my hair!”
    etc.

    That…
    and trashtalking would become a new part of the drovers skillset!

  31. The site probs seemed to be caused by a link to ‘adviva’ redirecting to another in a recursive manner. At least, that’s what I’m noticing from AU on FF and Chrome.

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