FEBRUARY 13, 2008

This environmental thing

We are all for Formula 1 portraying itself as being environmentally-friendly. That is a very good idea and getting rid of the crazy "fuel burn" segment of the qualifying was an intelligent thing to do. However, one does have to ask whether all this pressure on Asia-Pacific races to hold races at night is really a good idea as the floodlighting in Singapore is expected to use 3.2m Watts of power. This is a vast amount of electricity. Thus we have a rather contradictory approach to saving the world with Max Mosley and the FIA going great guns towards the KERS system and the Formula One group pushing people to use millions of Watts of power.

We appreciate that running the races at night will generate more income because the TV viewing figures will rise in the major F1 markets but, when all is said and done, using up all that electricity sends out the wrong message about the sport.

If there is more demand for the racing in Europe, then perhaps there should be more races in Europe and fewer in far-flung parts of the world where a racing car means very little to most of the population.