Very very sad news.

RIP Jules

Shame. But F1 has to be dangerous. They're almost driving around in motorised beach loungers as it is. If there's no danger, why pay them 20 million a year?

FFS, it's not danger money! Footballers get paid as much. Besides which only a few F1 drivers are on 'big' money and Bianchi certainly wasn't one of them.

Any sport has a certain element of risk and motorsport more than most but to say F1 "has to be dangerous" is plain wrong and in poor taste at this time. Bianchi's crash didn't have much to do with the intrinsic danger in high-speed motor sport (which only makes it more tragic).

Got to say your comment is in poor taste. His accident happened under yellow flag/safety car conditions. So they were not travelling at the regular speed, but a much lower speed.

RIP Jules. A sad day indeed. Condolences to his family.

I don't understand why it's poor taste. F1 is not football. Footballers are physically highly skilled. And I disagree that it's not danger money to a degree. F1 was always dangerous until Senna, after which the motorised loungers started being developed. It may have been an unspoken element, but it was very much part of the package.

There's a reason why Luois and Nico are ahead of the pack and Fernando's nowhere, and it's not their skill as drivers.

I should add that it's always sad when someone dies, which includes Jules Bianchi, and I appreciate that he wasn't one of the Favoured Few driving the fast machines. But I do think that the danger of death should remain a part of F1 if they want to justify their bloated salaries. Otherwise, parade around sipping Pina Coladas by all means, but take a wage cut.

Think you're just digging yourself deeper into a hole with this post, to be honest. The money top F1 drivers are making has absolutely nothing to do with the risk they take when competing. It's pure economics and is parallel to all the other big 'TV' sports. How do you explain the money the top team principals or car designers are making?

BIB - again, incredibly poor taste.

Why? They're paid what the market thinks they're worth, if their team/sponsors didn't think they were worth their salaries, they wouldn't pay it, end of story, many businesspeople get paid far more for doing nothing more dangerous than telling some lackey to move x amount of money from account A to account B. That Beyonce woman made $115 million last year, should someone chuck grenades at her when she's on stage?

Calling the cars loungers is doing their designers a disservice, the cars use less than half the fuel they used to, make 150 more bhp than they did in the early 1990's and on relatively unchanged circuits like Canada are something like 6 seconds a lap faster.

Whether the likes of Senna would have the same success at driving the electronic monsters of 2015 as they did at driving something with three pedals and a stick will never be known but it's an ever evolving sport. Nobody dying in an F1 car between 1986 and 1994 and then nobody until 2015 should be hailed as a success.

Quick edit: According to this link: http://www.crash.net/f1/news/207581/...arns-most.html Bianchi was on 500000 Euro a year, some footballers with their sponsorship deals earn that in a week.

That is an entirely vacuous statement. The risk is, or at least was, central to the pull factor. With no pull factor (backsides on seats etc) there's no money.

Let's not go there.



Still one helluva pay cheque.

Why do you think Nick Wallenda gets such huge audiences for his tightrope death-defiers? Precisely for that reason. Watching people risk their lives is extraordinarily exciting (dig into those darker, guilty recesses of your minds and you'll soon work out why that is).

Watching Hamilton drive his glorified sun lounger to another poll and another victory from the front row with no other car in sight (alla Schumaker) really ain't.

And yet over the last 20 years while the sport has become ever more safe it has also become ever more of a global commercial success, hence why the best drivers earn so much. F1's commercial success is down to it's packaging as a product, it's PR. People want to see cars going fast and I'll grant you the odd crash, preferably that the drivers walk away from. They do not want to see blood all over the track.

There are some who are saying the sport has got boring (usually fueled by some agenda against the current dominant team). There are even a few who put forward the argument that the sport is too 'safe'. I don't think anyone other than yourself is suggesting the mortality rate is too low!

I'd appreciate you pointing out where I said that. That has to be the biggest strawman anyone's ever attributed to me.



The "odd crash" at 180 mph can easily have fatal consequences, however cotton wool-wrapped the glorified sun lounger in question is. If people want the odd crash, they must be quite prepared for fatal consequences; that doesn't quite square with the moral outrage and turbo-charged Holier Than Thou attitudes expressed when I suggest that F1 needs to be dangerous.

In case anyone doesn't know any Italian, the phrase on the Ferrari is Jules in our hearts.

I'm surprised Hungary is still part of the calendar. It had the novelty of being the only Grand Prix behind the iron curtain when it started but that was a long time ago and it's usually one of the dullest races of the year.

I think there's enough of an inherent risk due to driving at speed as it is. We see F1 drivers walking away from rather nasty impacts, but we forget that the same impacts at the same speeds would have thrown a driver from their car, or killed them outright 30 or 40 years ago.

There is still quite a bit of danger involved. The issue with Bianchi was that the danger was completely and utterly avoidable - had the tractor not been there, he would have had a nasty shunt with the barriers with little more than a trip to the medical centre. The danger had little to do with racing itself.

I agree it can but dull as hell, but try this, http://formulafreak.kinja.com/everyt...ran-1609453893

For some strange reason it also seems to serve as a proxy Finnish GP for the Finn fans.

Apparently Finns (and Estonians) are descended from one of the Hungarian tribes which migrated north.

Now that was a start

Oh dear. Awful Lewis to start with

Race on ... !!!

Wont be a boring race now... woo hoo!

Do you know what i like about Hamilton (apart from nothing at all) is the way it is always somebody else's fault.

Yeeehaw go Seb.

LOL it's all Rosbergs fault.

Now i see from the replay, it was Rosbergs fauly because he wouldn't move over and let him through because im Hamilton and how dare you be in front of me.

Pack it in and become the rapper you seem to think you are.

Lewis isn't going to be able to mug that Williams on a straight.