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Originally Posted by torqdork
Maybe Renault's push into alternative fuel vehicles is their incentive, but with worldwide sales of hybrids from all makes being only 3½% of the total market, I wonder if it's really the industry's future or a PR stunt from Renault who threatened to quit F1 unless they got their way?
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Looking at Renault, as a company, and their specific direction for the future that statistic might not be the most relevant. Also consider that Renault owns a 43.5% share in Nissan and Nissan has a focus on efficiency and electric. And don't get too hung up on this electric thing, a big part of this equation is the fuel restriction, reduction in engine size and turbo as well. It's all about developing "efficiency".
If I was the head of a company and one of the divisions wants to drop half a billion or more in 1 year developing 1 engine that won't ever see a street car it would be hard for me to approve that if
something from that exercise didn't translate to the core-directive. Renault isn't a Ferrari or a Mercedes, it's target audience aren't the 1%ers of the world and on top of that the environmental restrictions for road-going cars around the world in the next 10-15 years are only getting more and more restrictive.
At the end of the day, while I've done my fair share of defending the direction of the sport, I'm not saying the old ways weren't exciting with big, fire-breathing engines.. Not at all. I LOVED those days. What I'm saying is that like anything, sometimes changes is a necessity of improvement and other times change is a necessity of survival. F1's current direction, IMHO, is a necessity of survival.
If more races are like Bahrain, and the critics still aren't happy, well then I think this sport simply isn't for them and they should move on because that's probably the most exciting F1 race I've seen several years. If that sort of excitement keeps up, F1 will create far more fans than it will lose in critics.