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Formula One

Quick update from Dan Roan's (BBC Sport reporter)Twitter feed
F1 driver Jules Bianchi no longer in the artificial coma in which he was placed shortly after his accident, however he is still unconscious
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Bianchi breathing unaided, vital signs stable, but condition still ‘critical’..treatment now concerns improvement of brain function.
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Bianchi sufficiently stable to be repatriated to France & has been transferred by air to Le Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nice
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This is good news.
 
Wow, wasn't expecting that news about jules. Great :)

In other news Grojean is at lotus next year making their line-up unchanged.
 
A fantastic day! Lewis fully deserved it. On reflection, it's been an enjoyable season and credit to both Mercedes drivers for providing the title fight.
 
Double points scrapped for next season

They should never have been introduced in the first place. I think a vote on 'F1 Fanatic' said that well over 90% of those who voted were against them, and I'm glad that they've been dropped. Yes, they didn't affect the championship battle at the end of the day, but I firmly believe in the principle that each race should be worth the same amount towards the championship.
 
I'm not against double points in principle, but there needed to be something different about the race to justify it. Run three tyre compounds, have two races, have the drivers throw banana skins behind them...something.
 
If McLaren drop button for the 2015 season, (and it looks like they're going to) I think it will be one of the stupidest decisions they could possibly make.

He's a reliable, proven driver who consistently scores points and who has a championship to his name. He may not have the raw pace of some drivers but he has comprehensively outpaced both of his rookie team mates in races for the last two years. If you look at the points tallies, he is largely responsible for securing fifth for McLaren in the constructors championship this year. Why would you want to push Button out for someone who has looked so average in comparison?

Outside of the car, Button has a lot of experience working with Honda from driving for the works team for so long and has a good understanding of the culture there. I believe he even speaks some Japanese. This would be an asset to the team in what could well be a difficult transition year from Mercedes to Honda power.

Button is popular in both the UK and Japan which is great for promoting the team. More importantly, it's an attractive prospect to any sponsors which is something McLaren are sorely lacking at the moment. If McLaren ditched Button, they would also be turning down the potential media frenzy surrounding two veteran champions going head-to-head.

To push a driver like Button out of the series without giving him the dignity of a proper farewell at his last race is disgraceful. The team's silence up to this point hasn't been fair on Magnussen either. I think that McLaren may have lost a fan here and I doubt I'm alone in that.
 
That would also leave Hamilton the only Brit on the grid. That shouldn't be the case as over half of the teams are UK based. I hope button stays.
 
I would love for Button to stay in Formula 1 for at least another year, so as to get McLaren-Honda off to a good start. However, I do have a bad feeling that he won't be. As CGM said, it'd be very poor if it turned out that Abu Dhabi 2014 was Button's last F1 race without having some sort of farewell, which leads me to believe that he may be kept on. He did perform better than Magnussen during the season, which is another factor in his favour. If McLaren were to keep Button and let Magnussen go, then I'm not sure where he'd end up. Caterham have yet to confirm either of their drivers for next year, but there's the chance that they may not even be in the sport come the beginning of March, so he may be left without a drive.
 
I'm just glad that McLaren have finally stopped faffing around and made a decision. Sure, it can't have been an easy one to make, but I do wonder whether they could have decided on who would partner Alonso sooner.
 
That just sounds awful, it really does.

GP2 (the main support races at F1 events) use screaming V8s, the whole concept of F1 is a joke now - it is the top of nothing aside from wealth.
 
F1 doesn't exist to appease nostalgic fans. It's supposed to be the cutting edge of automotive technology. Screaming, high revving naturally aspirated engines are great but the world is changing and technologically speaking, those sort of engines are becoming dinosaurs. It's essential that F1 stays ahead of the curve in order to remain relevant.

Personally, I'm enjoying the innovations that the new regulations have encouraged. The hybrid engine technology we've seen will filter down into road cars, much more so than the aero focused developments of the previous generation F1 cars.

One of the defining features of F1 is that it never stays still. It moves with the technology of the times. If you look at F1 cars across the decades, the rate of evolution is astounding. F1 cars from the 70s don't look like they belong to the same series as 50s F1 cars.

I think there's a case of rose tinted glasses going on as well. These days, all you hear from fans is how brilliant the V10 era was. Does anyone actually remember F1 from that era? Yes the engines were loud but my resounding memories are Schumacher disappearing off into the distance every race and faster cars not being able to overtake due to dirty air.
 
Ultimately it must thrill and excite. Audiences are diminishing on both television and at races. It is in serious decline and rightly so. Nobody says "wow, look how technologically advanced the cars are underneath the panels" and they certainly don't want to pay £150 to see them live or £50 a month to watch them on TV.

As for it being the pinnacle of technology, that may be the line they spout but ultimately the cars don't perform as well as they did ten years ago.

Dramatic changes have to happen or the whole thing will literally collapse, because F1's income comes from its audience and the downward trend has to have people worried.
 
Tom said:
As for it being the pinnacle of technology, that may be the line they spout but ultimately the cars don't perform as well as they did ten years ago.
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The cars of ten years ago were faster but the cars of today are far more advanced. If you introduced today's regulations ten years ago, there's no way that the cars would be as fast. The technology simply didn't exist.

I think the falling viewing figures are as a result of a number of factors. Part of it might be the drop in noise levels but there's also Mercedes dominance, Bernie's refusal to embrace social media and online streaming, ridiculous gimmicky rules like double points in the last race, the move towards paid TV subscriptions, extortionate ticket prices at races, Pirelli control tyres, DRS. I don't think you can attribute it to just one thing.

WEC has fully embraced hybrid propulsion and the series is going from strength to strength. This year, the series will have four factory manufacturers in LMP1, it's connecting with the fans and it continues to gain popularity. It's an out and out technological showcase and for the most part, the fans are loving it. I think that F1 could learn a lot from WEC.

Whilst a lot of people would like F1 to exist in a state of suspended animation, the fact is that it can't. High capacity naturally aspirated engines are being killed off throughout the automotive industry and being replaced with smaller displacement turbos. Engine manufacturers won't be interested in F1 unless they can produce something that's relevant to their road car engines.

The fact is that the era of the 20th century car is over. It was good while it lasted but we need to move on because performance cars as we know them are becoming unfeasible in the modern world. From what I've seen of propulsion technologies over the last few years, the future of cars could be a whole lot more exciting. It's not like old cars won't still be there to be enjoyed and appreciated. I feel that a lot of car fans are being the equivalent of the horse owner shaking their fist at the new-fangled horseless carriage that just spluttered its way past.
 
CGM said:
ridiculous gimmicky rules like double points in the last race, the move towards paid TV subscriptions, extortionate ticket prices at races, Pirelli control tyres, DRS. I don't think you can attribute it to just one thing.
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All of those things were design to INCREASE interest and turn the tide of falling audiences, however as you say they have generally had the opposite effect.

You can say what you want about needing to change, but frankly people don't want certain things to change. That's why after all these years and as caveman like it may seem to some, we still have athletes that thump each other to the head in the name of sport.
 
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