F1 AFTER THE ICE AGE

Gordon Murray makes no pretence about how much he enjoyed F1 in what he calls the “Castrol R and flaming exhausts” era, but he has no doubt the sport will continue in some form when there are no longer piston engines. “I suspect the move to hybridisation may have come too soon,” he says. “F1 could have put on a better show for a little longer with conventional turbo engines. But I’m very biased.”

Murray predicts “something of a dead period” as F1 embraces racing with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for a while but then a new golden era: “They will probably stagger into an electric age, but the hope will come from a new group of young engineers who were brought up with electric cars, who were driven in them as kids and had one as their first car. They will see a way to bring back the romance of racing. We have to put our trust in the next generation.”