correct me if im wrong, but last season alonso used the same car for all the races.
would a team really throw away wheel bolts after one use but keep bodywork, wheels, electrics etc?
this guy has all the common sense and facts of a washing machine.
Let them stop these big old airliners first. I live close to NATO airfield, with 20-year-old Boeings. If you have seen one of these baby's dump their kerosine..you know what I'm talking about.
Actually, yes they do throw away the wheelnuts, because they get quite damaged by the impact wrenches.
But the total annual cost of the wasted wheel nuts is probably less than the total cost (and CO2 production) of the food scattered around the spectator area of one single grand prix circuit in a weekend.
And the wheelnuts might even be recycled, but I bet the stuff everyone throws away isn't.
So I say "BAN PEOPLE, THEY ARE BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT". Every day should be national 'Kill a Fellow Human Being Day', and within a couple of months the threat of global warming will have virtually vanished
Yeah me too... The article raises valid points and I am also finding it very difficult to disagree. OK so by saying all Motorsport should be banned might sound extreme to the petrol heads but really do we need Motorsport?is it a necessity to our human survival? ermm No...
We are facing uncertain times over the end of this century with oil supplies slowly decreasing, our planet warming up and generally being poisoned and destroyed and we as a human race must get our priorities right.
But personally I think innovation and investment in new technologies which are cleaner is what is really needed and will keep Motorsport going I hope...
If at least the some of the major motor companies did something for the planet. We seemed to be only taking and not giving anything back... Oil companies are prime examples. *sigh*
Over the whole Nascar series, it is estimated that 2 million US gallons (7.57 million litres) fuel is burned which is quite a huge number.
Thing is people would ban everything these days if it does harm to anything and anyone, certainly though we need to curb our consumption of oil world wide....
I mean airliners burn a huge amount of fuel too so lets just ban them
Isn't that a double negative? So does he or does he not mean that we all should have less efficient cars that do about 3 miler per gallon?
Well, joking aside. There is a point in that, but I don't like the way this global warming thing is advertised to make people guilty and panic. You got to look at the big picture, how much motorsport, which also helps to develop better greener cars, does bad on the large scale. I'd say SUVs and generally bad cars in the US are a far larger problem, not even to mention any car in China.
Talking about politics and the big picture. Finland is a country of about 5 million people, we have less habitants than average cities around the world. Still the politicians agreed on the EU politics to cut CO2 emissions even more. This will eventually mean that we have to pay extra tax on cars. Which is unreasonable as we already have the most expensive and the oldest and crappiest cars in whole Europe. We need to pay even more and feel guilty if we on the rural area actually need a car? 5 million people! Think for gosh sake, there is 6 milliard people in the world, we all 5 million could have 10 cars each and it wouldn't mean a shit. Long haired Greenpeace terrorist (yes, terrorists) will faint and shout at you if you say to own two cars.
Be gentle for the environment as an idea is smart, no doubt. But this guilt campaign blows.
Motor racing is so deeply woven into the fabric of society. You cannot just eliminate something that has, does and will create/hold millions of lifestyles and more importantly jobs.
The money that car companies spend on racing and the kick-back they receive with better sales is a good enough reason to leave motorsports alone. Honda or Toyota or Chevrolet, not only expands their market by supporting motorsports but also develops extremely loyal consumers. These both send more and more money back into the company. Not to mention the engineers that hone their skill at race tracks and later transfer their skills and innovation to street cars.
If Honda can raise the attention of 1,000,000 people who drive cars and use consumable energy then that is well worth it. The whole idea is that Honda is keeping track of their emissions and putting that money back into development for more emissions friendly cars. While its still more of a cheap marketing ploy, good, market away, raise millions of peoples attention and more will be done than getting rid of the sport itself.
Years (and I mean years) ago, there was a piece on the Big Breakfast about shoes/boots you could buy that were made from the rubber of old F1 tyres, the sole and the upper.
They had a race around the garden, someone with ex-Michael Schumacher shoes v someone in ex-Damon Hill shoes.
I think he may be overlooking the fact that the ratio of cars on the road:cars use in motorsport is a number larger than I can think of. So what if an F1 car emits 9 times the pollution a road car does, I imagine there are more than 9 times as many road cars as F1 cars.
And as said, global warming is a natural process. Granted its sped up by humans, but the earth has been warming up for years - and by years I mean thousands of years.
Looks like he's writing to get attention. People pull the 'omg cars=earth going to melt' argument out of the bag whenever they fell like it, without actually conducting any form of credible research.
In conclusion, he needs to get over it. Personally I'd be more worried about the amount of oil we have left on earth.
How many of the activities that people do are necessary to survive?
Do we really live to survive? This is not the point…
And I can see the propaganda style on this kind of “I am here to bring the truth” messages…
Yes nearly everything that burns some kind of fuel pollutes the environment but the pollution produced by motor sport activities is not even comparable with massive earth polluting factors such us air transport or hundreds of thousand factories that use petrochemicals in any way…
Offsetting is a total scandal tbh. I suppose if I pay someone to grow a few trees I can buy a sports car and stop recycling and go insane consumer for the rest of my life and still declare myself green, can I?
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. In the meantime, I don't think burying our heads in the sand is going to do anybody any favours.
Yeah I've seen a few recycled tyre products, but they must only be making a tiny dent in the amount of rubber that gets wasted.
He does seem to be talking out of his ass most of the time but I agree with his general statement. Whatever your personal opinion about global warming may be, without public support there will be no motor racing. So F1 needs to make sure it regains an image of being a hi tech innovator that uses modern technology. With the engines they use now this just isn't the case. Adding some of the things Mosley is planning could change this.
Image is everything. If everything were about facts how come cars are being portrayed all the time as the cause of global warming when in fact coal power plants create far, far more co2?
Quite right. About time people started thinking about REAL issues instead of "the earth may or may not heat up in a few thousand years and it may or may not be down to us". Also finding a cheap, alternative fuel to oil will keep the environmentalists happy.
I'd at least like to see the airlines not receiving subsidies and tax breaks and then posting record profits like we've seen in recent years. They're known to be a huge contributor to environmental problems, so why are we rewarding them for it? Make them operate as a business, then if they sink they sink - let market forces decide how valuable air travel is. Our government seems confident in the ability of the private sector to solve all its other problems (despite all the evidence to the contrary), so why not this one?
Motorsport is a tricky one. On the one hand it may not be a huge polluter in the grand scheme of things, but it is a very visible display of western excess. How is this interpreted in developing countries?
That wheel nut figure is ridiculous, an F1 car has four of them and keeps the same ones for a race, seeing they do 20 races a season and all non-race wheel changes will be done with a less agressive gun and torque wrench, I'll accept they go through 4 a race weekend, that's 80 a year, throw in 20 for testing and double it for two cars and you get 200 a year which I doubt they actually go through.
I think you'll find most of them will be recycled, if they're going throught them that quickly they must have thought by now to use a replacable perishable material on the areas they get damaged. So presuming they don't cross thread them they don't actually need new ones, I refuse to believe that even the wheel nuts on F1 cars cost more than £50 each, single wheel nuts are used on quite a lot of racing cars so should be manufactured in fairly large numbers.
The real bill for wheelnuts may be high but it isn't £600000 a year
Motorsport is not one homogeneous thing: is club hillclimbing the same as Formula One?
For instance, if we consider Iran to be part of the "developing world", then motorsport, as well as being popular, is also the site of real social debate, the likes of which are unknown over here: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/110979.html
Must've been quite a while ago, as F1 tires actually have 0% Rubber anymore, actually haven't for quite some time.
Anywho, as long a Motorsport strives to move the industry forwards (as it has in safety and efficiency for the past century), it will remain relevent. Regenerative braking will be introduced in F1, and will lead to the improved efficeny of the the hybrid road cars that use this technology.
In early 90's, FIA banned CVT (continuously variable transmissions) from F1, after the William's team had a particularly sucessful test of one. The cvt's can produce more performance and better economy (dependant on driving conditions). Since the ban, CVT's are just now becoming accepted in road cars, 15 years later. Imagine if F1 had lead the way, CVT could be commonplace by now. (Just imagine an F1 race if the cars stayed between 18,000 and 20,000 RPM with barely any change in tone, screaming the entire way round). Anywho, this is one example of thumbs down to the FIA, but how motorsports can help the industry. Big thumbs up for diesel development Audi, and running pure Ethanol IRL.
Anyway, all of motorsports in less than a drop in the bucket in terms of world oil use. If the oil analysts doomsdaysayers are correct, it might be less of a problem than we imagine, if in 25 years we're out of oil.
) on the road in terms of pollution. What's the big deal?
I hope...