Official MHF Grand Prix thread.

[Montegriffo]

Don’t mistake me - I don’t care about efficiency, just curious whether electric can beat the F1 cars.

In a quarter mile drag race yes in a 200 mile Grand Prix not yet.

[Montegriffo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/57842205

Hydrogen-powered cars could be the future of Formula 1, according to F1 managing director for motorsports Ross Brawn.

He says sustainability is now a central objective for the sport, which has committed to become carbon neutral by 2030.

The engineer behind Michael Schumacher's seven world titles ruled out a switch to fully electric vehicles.

"Maybe hydrogen is the route that Formula 1 can have where we keep the noise, we keep the emotion but we move into a different solution," Brawn told the BBC.

Rising F1 star Lando Norris is also sceptical about introducing fully electric cars to Formula 1. You just don't get the same buzz from electric cars, he says.The British driver, who came third in this month's Austrian Grand Prix, worries going electric would take much of the atmosphere away from the sport.

"Something I love about Formula 1 and the race cars we drive is the sound and feeling you get from them," he says. "That's what makes it so cool and special and why the fans love it. "Formula 1 has one of the most ambitious sustainability programmes of any major sport and in 2019 it announced its plan to go net zero by 2030 with targets including:

Net-zero impact from race cars
Ultra-efficient and low/zero-carbon logistics and travel
100% renewably powered offices, facilities and factories
High-quality offsets and Co2 sequestration programmes. Brawn acknowledges that as the most prestigious motorsport tournament in the world, Formula 1 can play an important role shaping fans' attitudes to sustainability and climate change.

But he says F1 has no plans to move away from hybrid motors which combine internal combustion and electric engines during this phase of the sport's evolution.

"If you're lecturing to an empty chamber you're not getting any message across," argues Brawn. "You have to engage the fans and the reason they come is they want to see great cars, great drivers doing battle."

Many countries, including the UK, have set deadlines in the next two decades for phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles but Formula 1 is making no such commitment.

"We have a one-and-a-half-hour race, we have 1,000 horsepower cars, we are the pinnacle of motorsport. You can't get that bang without fossil fuels," Brawn adds.

He points out that the high-tech turbo hybrid power units used to power Formula 1 cars since 2014 are among the most efficient ever designed in terms of the percentage of fuel energy that is converted into power - a measure known as thermal efficiency.

F1 engines have a thermal efficiency rating of about 50%, while road-car petrol engines are generally in the region of 30%.

For the moment the sport's focus will be on developing synthetic fuels which use carbon captured from the air, farm waste or biomass.

Formula 1 rules already demand that the petrol used in F1 contains at least 10% biofuel and that proportion is likely to increase.

F1 is woke AF.

...also

In October Honda, which supplies engines to the Red Bull team whose driver Max Verstappen is currently leading the championship, announced it would be pulling out of F1 at the end of this year to concentrate its engineering focus on carbon-free technology.

[Smitty-48]

F1 is woke AF.

climate doomism is a moral panic unto itself, Woke is distinctly something else

you really have to be seriously deluded to try to convince yourself that F1 is a "progressive" virtue to signal with

the money is coming from the most repugnant repressive regimes on earth

it's the sport of tyrants, depots & extreme right wing repression

it's technically evil by any "progressive" measure

you are in fact Green Washing on behalf of the likes Muhammad Bin Salman & Co

[Montegriffo]

The Saudis murder journalists.
Doesn't that make them the good guys around here?

[Montegriffo]

They are pretty woke though.

[Smitty-48]

They are pretty woke though.

since they were always evil it's not really a let down

it's not like hockey that was fed to me like mother's milk practically from birth

really it's all about the drivers defying death itself, nobody has any love for the Constructors

[Montegriffo]

Hungaroring next on August 1st.
Can't wait...

[Montegriffo]

Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he called Max Verstappen after their controversial clash at Silverstone – and again defended his part in the incident, insisting that if the same situation arose again at the same corner, he’d tackle a wheel-to-wheel battle there in exactly the same way.

After the British GP collision that saw him taken to hospital for precautionary checks, Verstappen slammed Hamilton’s post-race celebrations as “disrespectful” and “unsportsmanlike” on social media and ahead of this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix, he doubled-down on the criticism – but added that the Briton had called him after the Silverstone race to clear the air. Hamilton, asked if he had a response to the Red Bull driver’s comments, said: “I did give Max a call just to check if he’s OK and let him know the respect is still there. Obviously he’s perhaps not reciprocated, but that’s OK

Lewis bossing it by warning Max he'll do it again.
Psychological shots fired.

[Montegriffo]

Pole for Hamilton.
Verstappen in 3rd place 0.4 secs behind.

[Smitty-48]

the weather is too nice today to watch tv

I'm doing yard work in the sun, chainsawing a fallen branch, mowing the lawn

drinking cold beers, smoking tobacky & dope, spinning tunes