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Rosberg: "Formula E is the future"

Published on 22 Aug 2017 16:00
3
By: Sam Gale

Reigning Formula 1 world champion, Nico Rosberg has proclaimed that all-electric series, Formula E is the future of motor racing. The series, which recently finished its third season with Lucas Di Grassi as champion, has gone from strength to strength, attracting numerous major manufacturers in the past few months, with Mercedes and Porsche pulling out of DTM and LMP1 respectively to concentrate on an entry into Formula E.

The former Mercedes and Williams driver was speaking as his championship winning 2016 car was added to the collection at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart and said the following on Formula E: "This is the future of the world and it will be exciting to see when all those manufacturers put their cards on the table, It will change our world completely, we'll have cars that drive themselves and not just in 20 years -- it's just around the corner. I'm very interested in how our lives will be simplified by that."

He went on to discuss his future in racing, with the possibility of leading the Mercedes Formula E program being rumoured, but did not seem to suggest a return to single seaters was imminent saying: "Now I'm in a great situation in my life -- it's like a discovery phase. Racing will always be fun to me, so let's see what happens. I will always be passionate about our sport and there will always be options to be involved. It does not have to be tomorrow, it could be in ten years, but I will be open to all possibilities."

FE News Nico Rosberg Mercedes Williams

Replies (3)

f1dave

Posts: 782
Only if they race on real tracks, not the walled in street shit they drive on now. OH, and manage to find a way to get up to racing speeds.
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- Aug 22 2017 - 19:40
F1todayfan101

Posts: 120
Look, let's be clear here. F1 & WEC cost >$100M per year to run (up to 300M in some cases?) and although F1 returns a good amount for the top teams its a risky gamble. WEC returns nearly no profit and has very little public interest and TV time. Who knows anything about DTM outside of Germany? In FE it is hard to spend more than $20M and you get TV time, people in the citys and the whole "electric car" buzz which is still going on and will do for another 5 years or so. So the choice to go the FE by the manufacturers is not because they think the racing is great, it's because they think the return on investment is more appealing than other forms of Motorsport.

FE would be much much better not using race tracks, keep the small city circuits, they are accessible to people who aren't die hard fans. The cars need to be about 2 foot shorter, have radical aero (active? Thats what road car are doing) to make them look crazy and get some low speed effect, and free up some of the bodywork development so they don't all look rubbish and the same but keep the rules sensible enough to prevent and arms war.

Also it would be much more interesting as closed cockpit cars that could get a bit of bumper to bumper action....

I'll accept that F1 is in a dangerous position but that can and will be remedied with the new F1 management.
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- Aug 23 2017 - 13:31
Ram Samartha

Posts: 1,172
F1 and petrol heads are just like the dinosaurs moments before the meteor hits. Not to mention being in denial. Meteor, what meteor?
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- Aug 23 2017 - 22:07