Road Cars and F1 Cars.

Usually, I travel by public transport whenever and wherever possible.

Sure it's sometimes grossly inconvenient, as you can't go where you want to go, when you want to go there. But there are advantages.

You don't have to concentrate on where you're going, you can gaze out of the window at what is going by, you can snooze, you can read, you can

listen to the gossip around you, you can try to do some writing. If you really want to get carried away, you can do all of those things in one journey.

But, a while ago, I did quite a lot of travel in a late-model car. And, one day, something hit me as I was going along. Luckily it was not another car, but just a thought.

I might point out here that my usual car is nick-named "The Beast", is getting on in years and doesn't get driven too much. So, any similarity between my car and the car I was in at the time the thought struck me is purely coincidental - apart from the fact that both cars were the same make, the same body-type and the same (originally) colour.

And it was this similarity but total difference between the two cars that triggered off the thought.

What occurred to me was that the car I was driving was a glut of gadgets, buttons and technology. The rear window wiper was designed to only operate from time to time. The cruise control knew that when I wanted to speed up to overtake another car, I would want to return to my previous speed after I had finished the "overtaking manoeuvre".

Okay, so what has all that to do with F1? On the surface, not much, I admit. But, compared to my car, this other car could have been said to be the product of F1 technology. There was the automatic gearbox, the engine management system, the Ford engine and the Dunlop "Monza" tyres.

Automatic gear-boxes are everyday life for many of us; yet they are now banned in F1, after having been used for a few years. Tyre usage is heavily restricted in F1, yet the technology there is supposed to have visible flow-ons to the ordinary road driver - apart from just names.

Should all the teams be able to demonstrate that whatever technology they are using has identifiable applications for ordinary drivers; the man-on-the-road, if you like?

Automatic transmission would have to be allowed. Fly-by-wire would be possible. Aerodynamics would have to be a case-by-case judgment. Suspension technology has obvious flow-ons to road cars. And engines; just think what Renault, Ford, Mercedes, Cosworth and the rest could do to the engines in our car!

But, being realistic, to what extent would all this really affect you?

On the safety issue, the F1 driver sits with his head sticking out into the airflow, and could in an accident be hit by one of his own wheels. On the other hand, you sit in a cocoon of steel, and the chances of you being hit by one of your wheels is, shall we say, minimal.

Most F1 circuits are as smooth as the proverbial baby's bottom - if not smoother - compared to many of the roads I have been travelling on. Yet the

F1 drivers regularly complain about the bumps on a circuit. Perhaps they they ought to fit the suspension from my company car onto some of those F1 cars?

What about the durability of an F1 car? How many times does a driver drop out of a race because his engine "blew up", or the gearbox shattered? Imagine what it would be like if your gearbox shattered after every 200 miles. Your local mechanic would be a billionaire!

Interesting, isn't it? In many ways, F1 cars bear about as much resemblance to an ordinary street car as a giraffe does to me. Sure we both have a single neck and four limbs and some other similarities, but we are clearly totally different animals albeit from the same stable; we're both mammals.

And so are F1 cars and street cars - discernably similar, yet totally different beasts. Both are designed to do totally different things in totally different ways. Yet both are cars.

F1 has never really been about relevance to street cars, not in the modern (ie. since 1950) era of F1. F1 cars are designed to go very fast, slow down extremely quickly, go around a corner and speed up at an astonishing rate, and to do this for 200 miles at a go - and then get re-built.

Street cars are designed to carry variable multiple people from place to place, over varying distances, in relative comfort, and to do it again and again.

We hear quite frequently about "designed obsolescence" being built in to a variety of everyday things and, quite frequently, about the cars we drive on the road. Comparing them to F1 cars, we don't really have a complaint, do we?

So what is the relevance of F1 to street cars? What is the relevance of F1 technology to street cars? Not much really, is it? So why bother trying to make them seem so?

There is another side to all of this, of course. As I said, F1 used to be touted as the test-bed of future road cars. But, today, might it be that road cars are the test-beds of F1 cars?

But that's just me.