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This kinda makes sense to me. F2 is officially supposed to be the stepping stone to F1, so of course success there should give you a superlicence.

FE probably gets a lower ranking here because the cars are (comparatively) slow compared to the other series. The whole point of the superlicence is to show that a driver is capable of handling the super special big boy cars, and a season in FE probably doesn't prove that.

my only complaint to Formula E is their reluctance to do more races on proper permanent tracks rather than street tracks filled with chicanes

but if that keeps F1 away from more street races, so be it

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

They won’t do that because if they did then you’d realise the cars are no faster than an old Formula Ford.

and if they use full power it'll be just for a one lap shootout because batteries cannot withstand

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

It's a philosophical thing. FE wants to be in the cities because it wants show off the technology by being able to bring motorsports as close to the people as possible.

You cut out a part of what I said, and the part that you didn´t cut, you read wrong.

This, it's their brand to come to the people. Their cars have bumpers on because it's a street racing series and they know they're gonna bump and grind around it

If they raced on traditional tracks, all they'd do is have the traditional motorsport fans come and see them (and based on this forum being full of traditional motorsport fans, probably nowhere near enough to make a viable profitable series either becuase people like to grandstand about old fashioned racing and won't take to anything new at all)

They race in cities to attract the casual fan who won't drive 30 miles to the sticks to a race track. Make it an event in their back yard, they'll come and they'll be turned on to electric power trains too, Formula E is all about Torque anyway, which is better for scrabbling around a city anyway than it is long, swooping corners of traditional race tracks.
If some of the casual fans end up realising these cars are pretty cool, the racing is amazing and become formula E fans and maybe think about an electric car for their next purchase, mission accomplished

What it will never be is Electric Formula 1, racing at Spa, Monza etc. Hell, the only reason they go to Mexico City is that it's also right there in the centre of the city and it's cheaper than making their own street track there.
Plus if they went to traditional venues they'd have to make their own shorter courses anyway so they can make sure they brake enough times for regenerating the batteries, so you'd have a lose lose, traditional track in none traditional layout won't please either sets of fans

And it's working, I've had way more non-motorsport fans ask me "what's this Formula E thing all about then?" and maybe even give it a watch, than I have had them ask "what's this BTCC/Indycar/NASCAR think all about?" without there being a fatal accident first.....

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

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F1 is reaching that point to me with the fake crowd noise. I just can't stand it.

But to be positive, at least this year, at the traditional tracks the crowds have been huge. So what do I know (cheers, whooping, air horns going off in the background).

Has we got categorical proof this is happening? Or have they just put more microphones in the grandstands and just put more focus on it?

I don't think anyone's come out and said it, but it was very noticeable at Bahrain where the 3 men and the goat that actually occupy the grandstand were made to sound like 10,000.

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Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

These last few races have had genuine crowd noise imo, you can't have 400k people silent or quiet enough to not be picked up by the microphones during a 3-way battle.

Lol @0:50 THIS is what a real crowd reaction is.



Seriously this is the first video I've seen of them, and it wasn't as dramatic as I thought, but still, what morons. The old crazy priest has them beat though. So there is another thing they suck at.

I don't get the comparison.

Those people and maybe drivers would've been dead if it wasn't for Zhou's crash. They were sitting on what would've been an active track in lap 1.

hopefully those dipshits were banned from every racetrack in the world for life

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This is the point. I think that the automotive industry has closed itself off in a lie to the public: the false promess that electric cars will eventually reach the same range and/or speed than ICE, which is physically impossible. It's not a technology issue that more engineering will overcome, it's a theoretical physics limitation to batteries vs hydrocarbon fuels, that isn't fully overcome with the gain in efficiency.

And these limitations are for a touring car, which we can live with. Don't even consider high-output uses such as towing cargo, semi trucks, or... racing cars. You will never have a two-hour 220kph average race on 100kg of battery.

The sooner auto makers come out of the closet, the better it will be for the public's acceptance and for the energy transition. Users should be prepared to the fact that they will pay more, for less performance and less convenience. As will be the case for many aspects of our daily lives as we're inevitably switching off the black drug.

I meant because unless they ran straight out into the road to commit suicide the cars would have already been gone. I assumed the photos I saw of them sitting on the track was before the cars had gone by. They sat on the track after they did (apart from the damaged cars going by at slow speed).

But that doesn't change what complete morons they are.

another problem is that the world is not ready for a full switch to electric powertrains like bureacrats are trying to do. Could be another case of creating a debt (in this case the enviromental one) and making everyone pay for the decision of a few. Of course EVs are a great thing for daily use but there's still many things to solve, the problems are very complex and solution is too far away

anyway, I still dream to see Formula E closer to the nature, perhaps at the Pergusa lake in Sicily at the legendary Enna Pergusa

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

This is the fallacy the fossil fuel lobby likes to promote to try to "ah-ha! gotcha" anything progressive

Formula E isn't supposed to replace formula 1, electric power trains aren't supposed to replace combustion engines on their own, but they're supposed to show the viability of ONE of MANY options of non polluting energy.
FE just had the fortune or misfortune, whichever way you want to look at it, of coming out first.

Electric Engines aren't gonna get you from John O Grotes to Milan on one tank, but for running around a city in a Fiat 500, it might as well be electric because there's no real benefit to that car being Petrol when it just goes to do the weekly shop and to visit grandma and back

Hell, this is early enough in the development of non-polluting energy that in the similar early stages of the ICE being discovered we had all kinds of wacky inventors who thought they knew how to power this new car thing better, coal, steam, ethanol (should've stuck with that lol) and hell, even electric back then too, before it got quashed in favour of petrol

I don't know why people expect the ICE to be replaced IMMEDIATELY with a green power source that is foolproof and as convienient as oil burners without expecting to go through this period of working shit out that we're doing now. It happened over 100 years ago until they eventually perfected the ICE, it's happening now with Electric, Hydrogen, Wind, Water and whatever else, we'll get there, just be patient

*Posted during a 40 degree day in freaking ENGLAND, sure, things can go on as they are just FINE!

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Electric cars just require a different approach to long distance travel. With some planning you can still go everywhere and the latest EV's have a decent range and a decent charge rate. 400km isnt too far off anymore and thats around 4h of driving. Then stop somewhere to recharge in ~30m while you eat and recharge yourself.

My cousin used to drive across Europe in his Tesla (earlier model). He did exactly that.

We just need to let go of the idea of driving 700-800kms, fuel up in minutes and do another 700. Which technically shouldnt even be allowed. Truckdrivers barely can drive that long in 1 run.

I'm no engineer but I'm not sure how you can say electric cars will never match ICE cars for range. They used to say the same thing about ICE vs the horse. Just in the past 10 years there have been massive strides in battery capacity, battery weight and recharge speed. There's a lot more to go (particularly making them repairable and recyclable) but on the current path I think there's a pretty good chance in 10-20 years there will be no practical benefits to ICE over electric.

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