It is a load of old bollox isn’t it?
The cars were never the big users of fuel, the trucks and aeroplanes used to get us there were.
I remember during the first fuel crisis working out that the whole season of F1, including testing, used about the same fuel as one trip from London to New York in a Jumbo.
At Hesketh 8 of us flew to races plus truckie and gopher in truck.
My first season a Williams we chose not to spend money on a Truck or motorhome and spent the money on wind tunnel testing - which worked out well - using a rented truck to transport the flight boxes and the paddock kiosk for food.
Now those vast number of trucks are used for the Pit garage decoration kit, meeting offices and hospitality unit (one would probably still be enough for car and spares…)
Now we have hybrid cars which get the same power from 100kg of fuel that we used to get from 160kg, which is clever, but completelky obfuscates the fact about how “green” F1 is. It is much, much worse now than 49 years ago when I started (!)
…and the pic I put up is just the first row of trucks; there were more behind that, and then another entire ~half kilometre or so of trucks at 90 degrees which I didn’t bother uploading.
Then there’s the 500,000 fans, averaging two per car… Though shuttles from nearby towns exist, I doubt they account for more than 5-figures-worth of fans. Aaaand because Silverstone hasn’t upgraded access to the many parking fields in decades, you have hundreds of thousands of cars sat at tickover for 2+ hours (because most people are too lazy or climatically-frail to turn their engines off while they wait!)
Then there’s the helicopters - the in-out flight paths were full all day long, they never stopped, and vehicle proximity was equivalent to Heathrow, i.e. bloody close. The choppers are BIG now, too: all the titchy little personal craft are a thing of the past it seems…
Then there’s all the thousands of generators - there’s next to F-all on-site electricity (which had never struck me before) - so every single thing (aside, I’d guess, from the newest main facilities) is run from a generator, from the smallest concession stand to the gigantic hospitality tent/barn thingies, which have great banks of massive generators.
I’m only knocking the hypocritical greenwash - Sam and I chose to be part of the problem after-all - but there’s no denying that for 3-4 days, every F1 race weekend is generating a small city’s worth of pollution - of which the race-cars’ contribution is beyond trivial!
Wow, didn’t see that coming. Timing is really rather odd, isnt it?
The only logical reason I can think of is it being the condition for the Verstappens staying…though why they’d wanna stay given the startling decline is equally odd (and that’s reason enough for his head to roll, but the ‘why right now’ part puzzles)
Agreed. I guess there were more complaints in the pipeline + the fast-sinking fortunes of Tsunoda in particular. Plumb-last and a lap down at Silverstone is an ugly look for any team, never-mind RB
I’ve been saying for years that dull seasons often throw up a lot more interesting politics.
Bitching takes on new levels.
It’s what kept me watching for most of the 90s and 2000s.
The last couple of years have been far from dull though.
Whatever’s behind it will no doubt make good copy. But, as already stated, timing seems odd.
As Frank said some time ago, Christian Horner is a much better Team Principal than Toto Wolf. I would go further and think that Horner has been the best TP since Ron Dennis lost his way.
Toto took over when Ross Brawn, Bob Bell and Aldo Costa, plus the Brixworth engine team had created all that was required to win in 2014 and for many years after. As Frank said, all Toto had to do was not mess it up.
Horner meanwhile had to build RBR from the remains of Jaguar F1. He got them winning in 2010 -2013 and then turned the team around after the Mercedes F1 dominance, to dominate for a few seasons, starting in 2022.
Saw the F1 movie last night with my daughter (DTS junkie)
I know it’s got stellar reviews but I thought it was just “OK” as a movie…and the racing action wasn’t as realistic as you’d think (for all the track time they took up on GP weekends)
OTOH I thought they lifted decent plot elements from real F1 events (Singapore 08 / AD 2021)
(copied from PFM so some of you might have seen this already) I was invited to do a podcast with a driver coach and a mindset coach around current topics of interest in F1 and thought that some of the posters on here might find it interesting:
