The Future of Motorsport Part 1

Racing is now a huge global sport encompassing many forms of constantly evolving competition. Where it is headed in the future is anybody’s guess but it will undoubtedly change dramatically over the coming decades, just as it has since its inception. That is its very nature, to continually innovate.

To hypothesize about where it is headed, we must first understand what it is. Racing is a captivating elixir of business, sport and entertainment, and engineering.

The business side has become increasingly professional. What started out as recreational rivalry among wealthy gentlemen has grown to become the domain of highly paid professional drivers and teams funded by multinational corporations. The gentlemanly element is still present in amateur areas of the sport, but the top level of the sport is now completely dominated by professionals who are paid to build exposure and recognition for their sponsors.

That is done largely through the entertainment value that racing provides for its audience. Spectators want to see great competition, fast cars, and recognizable drivers. It’s also important that the action is fair and the rules clear and easy to understand. There are many opportunities to deliver the “product” or entertainment, not just with live audiences and television but also with many types of new media.

Lastly, the engineering and innovation exists to enhance the business and entertainment sides of the sport. It shouldn’t be done for its own sake because that simply leads to costs spiraling out of control. Once the commercial benefits received are exceeded by the cost of competing, there is no longer a favorable return on investment. If the ROI is not favorable, sponsors withdraw and the series is emaciated or collapses. At worst it is destructive. At best it is unstable and cyclical. The only useful innovation is that which has relevance to society in the larger scheme of things, not purely for racing purposes.

These three items form the basis of the sport. All of them must be addressed adequately in order to maintain a healthy, professional racing series. In the next post I’ll discuss how I see racing evolving in the future.

The Future of Motorsport – Part 1

Racing is great. I love it – actually I’m fanatical about it. But one has to wonder how sustainable it is in today’s increasingly environmentally conscious world. Is there a benefit or purpose to auto racing? I believe the answer is yes – if changes are made. But it’s going to take some explaining

First and foremost racing is entertainment. Any racing series that isn’t entertaining enough will fail. And that all depends on people: Fans, sponsors, teams, drivers, and the organizers. Get the word out, make it easy for people to watch and participate, and get them to come back time and again.

On track the racing action has to be exciting and close. Once they can exceed a certain speed, it doesn’t matter how fast the cars are. It’s how close the racing is, and how many different drivers have a genuine chance of winning a given race that matters.

Second, how can it be beneficial to society at large? It can advance the state of the art by encouraging the development of better automotive technologies. I’ll go into more detail about this in part 2, but in these days of fuel conservation and environmental concerns, any series that is not exploring its potential for encouraging the development of technologies that have real world benefits in energy conservation is at risk of becoming driven out of business because it will become irrelevant.

Finally, how do we go about doing this? We do this by making it accessible and enabling more participation on every level: Driving, team ownership, event promotion, and media. And much of that has to do with keeping costs down which, if done well, has the added benefit of increasing value.

The more people there are involved with a given series, and the more passionate they are about it, the better the show will become and the faster the innovations will come; provided the series was well run and the rules were solid. Innovation and stability are hard to balance. But it is by no means impossible.

The Future of Automotive Transportation

This is my opening post of what will become a repository for various ideas, thoughts, and concepts pertaining to the future of automotive transportation. I have a collection of notes scribbled on Post-It notes and scraps of paper. They’re not doing anyone any good in their current state, not even me (too disorganized for my tastes).

We live in an interesting and fast changing era. Much will change and nothing is certain. But it’s safe to assume people will still conceive, design, develop, regulate, manufacture, transport, sell, service, and recycle the vehicles of the future. By examining current trends we can begin to see what may be in store down the road.

Essentially there are only three fundamental issues with the automotive industry today. Environmental, safety, and economic. The first two are regulated in the United States by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The economic issue centers around dependency on foreign sources of petroleum. Many of those sources are hostile to the US and therefore represent a threat to both national and economic security.

Beyond the economic and national security issue, it has become apparent to many that the use of petroleum is not sustainable. We can’t go on consuming it at the rate that we have been. As if that wasn’t bad enough, due to the growth in demand from developing (China, India, et al) and industrialized (US) nations it’s becoming less sustainable even faster. Depending on who you ask there’s a strong possibility the world is going to run out of usable oil within 50 to 100 years.

Not only that, drilling for oil, transporting, refining, and burning it is not doing anything good for the environment. It doesn’t matter if you believe it’s a contributing factor to global warming. The fact is that every pound of fuel burned results in more pounds of carbon dioxide (as well as other substances) being released into the atmosphere . In a way it’s like smoking. You may not get lung cancer from it, but isn’t the act of burning something and inhaling it unnatural? There are going to be side effects.

Finally, from a safety standpoint roughly 40,000 people die each year on American highways from vehicle-related accidents, and millions are injured (about 3.3 million in 2006 according to the Centers for Disease Control).

All these factors combined clearly indicate that the automotive industry will undergo massive changes. I’m here to talk about the problems, provoke discussion, and hopefully help find solutions to these issues that we face.