Vettel’s F1 green crusade

FOUR-TIME F1 world champion Sebastián Vettel has seen F1 changed and evolved since his first race 12 years ago. With progress, change and evolution, there’s usually something that gives or that’s compromised and that usually is, the environment.

According to the CNN article, “Sebastián Vettel: F1 can be at the vanguard of tackling climate change” written by Ben Morse and Amanda Davies, “According to CleanTechnica, a single team could travel over 109,000 air miles over the 21-race calendar, meaning in total, all 10 teams would be burning approximately 147 million pounds of carbon dioxide just to showcase the sport.

That’s the same amount of emissions that come from charging over 8.5 billion smartphones.“That’s a lot of smartphones and carbon dioxide promoting a sport all over the world.

Vettel says, “If we can be the formula to actually develop what the world can use and needs, that would be great,” Vettel told CNN Sport’s Amanda Davies.

“Because then any question or doubt you have about Formula One, whether it’s necessary or not, if we can provide a solution to the future to make a giant leap forward, then that’s great.”

Vettel continues, “It’s inevitable we have to look at it,” said the 32-year-old Vettel. “We should give the right framework so we can use our engineering power and our intelligence within this environment to actually make a difference.

“So that one day we can come out and say: ‘Look, we have as much fun as before, everything is the same or better, but with the difference that we’re not polluting any more. We are doing something good and showing the world a good way of doing things a lot better.”

Unfortunately, Vettel didn’t offer specific, detailed and proposed solutions to lessen F1’s carbon footprint on the environment.

I’m not a subject matter expert on cars but maybe we should start with maybe experimenting with hybrid electric race cars. Does the style of driving of these F1 drivers cause pollution? What is research and development doing about it?