I am watching a F1 motor-racing guy drive a racing car with a map of the Earth on it. It is a Honda and apparently the idea is to break with the usual sponsorship of tobacco firms etc and instead “raise awareness about ecological issues”, according to the television commentator. So let me get this right: a F1 car that does more than 200mph and uses a fair amount of petrol – that evil greenhouse effect stuff – is attempting to “raise awareness of ecologicial issues”. Think of how much Co2 is pumped out by all these F1 racing teams from Ferrari, Benetton, McLaren, etc. Think of how much of the stuff is pumped out transporting the drivers, mechanics, press flacks and of course the crowds to places like Melbourne or Monaco. The idea that motorsport has anything to do with saving the planet from doom is preposterous. Has this most red-blooded of sports, once famed for dudes like Ascari, James Hunt or Fangio, become as pussified and guilt-ridden as everything else? F1 cars are supposed to be in bright colours, with emblems of cigarettes and naked women on them, like old WW2 American military aircraft. It is all part of the essential naughtiness involved in driving a car very fast round a track, which if you think about it, is one of the more pointless ways to spend an afternoon, and all the more wonderful for it.
You have to hand it to these guys in the Honda racing team. The Japanese are unfairly accused of not having much sense of humour, but this is one of the best jokes I have seen for a while. Keep it going guys.
I think you should research things more carefully before you make this sort of comment. Formula has been carbon neutral since 1997
I think you should research things more carefully before you make this sort of comment. Formula One has been carbon neutral since 1997
Formula One and other motor sports are technology platforms to make the cars we drive safer and more efficient. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Last NASCAR race er.. product refinement test I watched the 2nd place car crossed the finish line backwards in a slide at probably still over 150mph after 100s of miles of duking it out, er, competatively testing platforms and procedures. So
coolbeneficial.I think that they use methanol as fuel and not petrol.
They do not use methanol as fuel. they use unleaded petrol like normal road cars with no special performance enhancing additives.
The first comment is correct. F1 AND WRC, which are both run by the FIA have been carbon neutral since 1997 and 2001 respectively. FIA have been investing in preserving forests and various other green initiatives in South America.
Quite right, Johnathan. Whether F1 is “carbon neutral” or not is irrelevant (completely irrelevant, in fact, but let that pass). They should stop fannying about pretending to save the world and try making the bloody cars go faster. (For those who don’t follow the sport, Super Aguri – don’t ask – did better yesterday with second-hand 2006 Hondas.) One opinion among F1 fans is that this “green” excercise is a stunt to deflect attention from the fact that the team doesn’t have any major sponsors this season. Even their arch-rivals, Toyota, who’ve been even less impressive recently, are backed by Panasonic and Denso.
I wouldn’t mind so much, but the car is ugly. A reader of Autosport got it spot-on when he wrote in a week or two ago saying that it looked like someone had sneezed on it.
By the way, while we’re (vaguely) on the subject, I think Samizdata people should see this, from today’s Telegraph.
Personally I couldn’t give a flying fig if F1 is ‘carbon neutral’ or not. Indeed, I’d much rather my motorsport serve as a spectacular V-sign to the likes of Greenpeace, Fiends-of-the-Earth and suchlike. Fun isn’t meant to give you some sort of warm feeling of environmental-benificence; Fun should grip you with a visceral sense of “Hell, YEAH!” .
The idea that F1 is developing technology that later makes its way into road cars is a valid one, althoug I don’t think F1 needs justification. It’s worthwhile for itself.
Fuel consumption is an interesting thing. It varies from track to track, but a typical figure is around 80l/100km. That’s pretty atrocious of course, but I’ve driven road legal vehicles (SUVs) that are only a factor of three better. And *I* wasn’t going from 50 mph to 200 mph and back every ten seconds like they are. I don’t know what a F1 car’s fuel consumption would be like at a steady 100 km/h but I suspect the answer is “not bad”.
Oh and a perhaps interesting tidbit. I fly gliders. Mostly just for fun and taking friends for rides, but I’ve entered the odd race and even done OK.
In trying to find some way to explain what a modern glider can acheive while using zero fuel I hit upon the following comparison: Glider races at the top levels are about the same distance as Aussie V8 Supercar races. The average speeds are about the same too.
As far as pure speed goes, this (southern) summer the record speed for a 500 km out and return glider flight has been increased from 247.5 km/h (set in 1999) to first 275.8 km/h on Dec 16 and then to 306.8 km/h on Dec 22. That is *smokin*.
Earth friendly, but lets go NIGHT RACING??? Spend millions to light a track, and use that much power???? Grow UP F1!!!!
I think this is damage limitation on their part, showing ‘a little willing’ in order for the sport to carry on without too much hindrance from the green/ tyrannical lobby.
At least then they can point the finger at other motorsports and suggest that they are targetted first…
The amount of fuel consumed in a F-1 race, practice, etc. is negligible compared with that used by fans getting to and from the circuit. If motor sport is your bag, get a race car, a tow car and a trailer. Live the dream and stop getting your thrills secondhand.
And Kimmi wins his first race with Ferrari, and Lewis Hamilton gets a podium in his first F1 race. Other stand-outs were Felipe Massa recovering from a blown gearbox in qualifying to go from 21st place at the start to 6th at the finish, and rookie last year Nico Rosberg going from 12th to 7th to equal his previous best placings.
If there is nothing more left you can think about enhancing your products, and the competition is more creative, you always have the option to go green!
It’s just synonymous of having run out of ideas.
Its a gimmick to attract people to watching it over other motorsport. I hope the green F1 cars do horrendously badly. If you want to watch exciting racing then try the British Tour Car Championship or even DTM (German touring cars). BTCC has more excitement in most races than an entire season of F1.
Hey stop football and other popular stadium sports, a lot more people driving to them every weekend, producing CO2, and what have this sports don to make cars cleaner?.
Al car sports together are much smaller, than that ones, and how polluting the cars of today would be without the extra development involved in racing?.
Terry, thanks for the advice but I prefer to watch it as well as occasionally have a crack at the real thing. One of these days I am going to treat myself to a course in driving supercars around a place like Donington Park. You can actually spend a lot of time and alas money doing this.
I went to Donington last year to watch the Renaux event, with cars of all sorts including last year’s victorious machine with Alonso driving it. Absolutely fantastic. The noise these cars is supernatural.
James, it may be that Honda and other F1 times are trying to deflect hostile attention from the sport, but it is only going to work for a team. The eco-loons are not appeasable in the long run. They have to be confronted head on.
Abusive comment deleted by author.
Damn. I just typed an immense comment, only to accidentally hit the “close tab” button and lose the whole thing. The Gods of technology telling me that brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps.
Andrew, that’s true. But the on-track racing is only part of the game in F1. It’s really engineering-as-sport. The fascination, for me at least, lies in the different solutions the teams come up with to the problem of making a car go faster (why is the long-wheelbase Ferrari so much better than everything else, when the consensus is that the new control tyre works best with a short one?). The race itself is almost incedental. I’d add Aussie V8s to your list, too: that’s real racing.
Seen in that light, the greening of Honda does make a certain sense (although I think the “no sponsors” theory holds more truth than they’d like to admit): if their competitive engineers are smart enough to produce more downforce and speed from today’s aerodynamically-limited V8s than from the ground-effect turbo cars of the early ’80s, maybe they’re clever enough to save the world. Or something like that. I don’t say I agree with it, but I think that’s the idea. The fact that they’ve built a car that seems to be slower than last year’s tends to undermine the message a bit, mind you.
Sam Duncan,
I’ve done that so many times that I’ve worked out a system. I preview often enough that I don’t get too many corrections behind what I have written. And I have a shortcut on my desktop that takes me to the cache file. It actually takes me to the profiles file since cache file names change, but two or three clicks, roll down to the most recently cached page, and there is my comment at the last preview.
But you’re probably right about brief comments. The sleepier I get, the longer my comments get.
Well to be honest “Utes” racing from Oz and even NASCAR is more fun to watch than F1. I used to watch F1 but Schuie made it so boring I stopped, never went back.
I was a serious fan of Gilles Velleneuve. After he died, I couldn’t watch it anymore. 25 years later I can enjoy the sport, but it doesn’t hold me the way it used to.
I enjoy NASCAR quite a bit. When Dale Earnhardt died, it was a relatively benign crash accompanied by a safety equipment malfunction. I have seen many (very many) far worse accidents where not only was the driver unharmed, he jumped out of the car looking for the guy that caused it. I don’t have the fear that I had with early 80s formula that somebody I really like might die.
NASCAR has been working very successfully and sometimes unpopularly to keep drivers (and fans) safe. The driver’s safety equipment can protect against almost all incidents and on the tracks where the potential speeds cause energies in excess of the car’s safety eqiupment, they have instituted restrictor plates. I can enjoy NASCAR. Even the crashes.
Reminds of the protesters who cut down trees to make a treehouse so one of them would have somewhere nice to stay while she protested against logging.
I think the number of lazy Americans going to a shopping mall less than one km away every day produces more damage to nature than a F1 weekend does.
I mean get a bicycle like the Dutch have. 🙂
Also F1 made a LOT of road cars safer and more environment friendly.
The race, the glamour, the gossip, the action… it’s all exciting and fun. It brings people together and it generates thousands of jobs worldwide. It generates millions of income and brandawareness to big and smaller companies. Even to thousands of freelancers etc.
Just my 2 cents.