With 18in rims, wonder if thats heading to F1 any time soon? I've not heard much about UK TV coverage yet and its due to start in less than a year now. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image Formula E will become one of the first major single-seater championships to run an all-weather tyre. The all-electric Spark-Renault SRT_01E, which was launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show on Tuesday, features 18-inch rims, fitted with a treaded Michelin tyre that will be used in both wet and dry conditions, eliminating the need for tyre changes unless conditions are exceptionally wet.
yeah because running an electric prototype formula car in monsoon conditions doesn't seem mad at all..
Just read more on it. He is teaming up with the DAMs racing team... A division they are calling...... Ready for this...... (braces for further cheese puns.....) e-DAMS.....
I've just lot all respect for Formula E as a racing series... Viewers to vote through twitter for who gets "KERS" type advantage. Seriously?
A tragic mistake when they had the world at their feet (OK, not literally). But yeah, talk about shooting oneself in the foot…
Quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, what's to stop 1 team rigging it and flooding twitter? if I wanted to I could set up 1000 twitter acounts and vote 1000 times for the same driver, absolutely ludicrous. Why can't they just make it like Indycar, (and like drs should've been)
Going to take some getting used to :s [video=youtube;dqIsFbdLJ7k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqIsFbdLJ7k[/video]
They definitely look better than next years proposed F1 cars, but they're so quiet! Building up the revs, it sounds like there's an explosion of noise coming closer and closer.....aaaand nope. Although from what Di Grassi said at the end it sounds like there's more power to come. I take it they were trialling a less powerful car? EDIT: Having just looked at the other thread, maybe they won't look that much better than next years cars, but they still look pretty good anyway imo.
If I've understood that video correctly, was that only 1/4 power? Or was the peak power there just not the endurance? Seemed an odd choice of test track, lots of fast open stretches when the street circuits are likely to be more point and squirt. Still not sold on the grooved tyres. My understanding is that they're deliberately chosen to both run in wet and dry conditions (as a cost-cutting exercise) and to limit the amount of grip to make the cars more skittish under acceleration and slide more. However, surely that's inefficient when it comes to lap time so that means the teams will increase downforce from the wings to make the cars more planted, which creates more dirty air behind the cars and therefore makes overtaking harder. Also, it's not the straight-line speed of F1 which is particularly impressive, it's the cornering speeds, which these tyres will artificially reduce. I don't think it'd be that expensive to have slicks for the majority of races, then these wet-dry tyres available for races that look like being wet, or start wet. So long as race control make the call on tyre choices it wouldn't be an issue, and it's hardly that much more expensive.