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French was still more lingua franca in western Europe than English, when I was a child 40 years ago. That role still echoes in the name of many international organizations, especially in sports. Check the title at http://www.fifa.com/ and the name of http://www.fia.com/ The languages at http://www.olympic.org/ and at http://www.uci.ch/ are English and French (the original ones for the Comité international olympique and Union Cycliste Internationale). And wonder why http://www.fiba.com/ is FIBA and not IBF despite the title of the page is International Basketball Association. It used to be Fédération Internationale de Basket-ball Amateur. All of them were born at a time when French (the people) were internationally as active as English speakers are now, and English speaking countries where more centered on themselves than they are now. Ultimately the language follows the power and dinamism of countries: if you have to know a language to make money, you learn it. Chinese could be the next one but it's severely handicapped by the writing system. Nobody really wants to learn by heart thousands of characters unless you're born there and have to. I expect a very bumpy transition, if it will ever happen, and a lot of resistence. A Chinese written with latin alphabet would have more chances. Given the attitude of Chinese rulers maybe I'll see them mandating a switch to latin characters, and don't dare to protest. After all they already use qwerty to write Chinese.

According to the FIA Formula E site they will go a maximum of 225Km/h. That is about 135mph. While they look the F1 cars they can not go nearly as fast.

The purpose was partly to stop qualifying being its own arms race, with cars in completely different specification than for the race, and partly to reduce costs and the number of travelling staff. At the same time, "T Cars" --- a third car, available as a spare --- were banned, so that if a driver destroys a car in practice the team either have to rebuild it or not race. They're allowed to travel with a spare monocoque, but it cannot be built-up and it does not get pit space.

There were endless howlings from the teams, claiming that without a complete strip-down after qualifying, with a large crew working overnight to check everything on the car, reliability would go through the floor and races would finish with only a handful of stragglers fighting a durability battle (our US viewers may find this ironic in light of a certain US Grand Prix, of course).

The same argument was advanced, mutatis mutandis, over limitations on engines and gearboxes, limitations on the number of gear clusters available, limitations on certain forms of telemetry and a wide variety of "the cars can't just be left to run themselves, you know" interventions.

In fact, reliability is now far greater than ten years ago. It's not uncommon for there to be no mechanical retirements, certainly not from the longer-standing teams, and the days of engines imploding on the track are long gone. A front-running driver will probably only have one, if even that, mechanical DNF per season. The teams deliver a functioning car when the pit lane opens at 1pm Saturday, and that car then runs twenty or thirty laps in qualifying and sixty or seventy in the race, a total of perhaps 250 miles, without much maintenance work beyond tyres, fluids and batteries (section 34.1 on page 18 of the sporting regulations).

So again, we see that "preventative maintenance" turns out to really be "provocative maintenance", and leaving working machines alone is the best medicine for them.

http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/198095623__ 05_07_2006_wmsc_decisions.pdf

PRESS RELEASE
WORLD MOTOR SPORT COUNCIL

The World Motor Sport Council met in Paris on July 5, 2006. The following decisions were taken:

FORMULA ONE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
Bridgestone has been selected as the official tyre supplier to the FIA Formula One World
Championship in 2008, 2009 and 2010*.

Microsoft MES has been selected as the official ECU supplier to the FIA Formula One World
Championship in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Due to a significant increase in cornering speeds in Formula One this season, the World Motor
Sport Council agreed to consult with the Formula One Technical Working Group regarding possible
measures to slow the cars. ... Hmm - I think that last paragraph might already be covered, no?

I tell you....Its like reading the FIA's recommendations for the formulas (under which construction and operation of the formula 1 cars must operate). see http://www.fia.com/resources/documents/1603301296_ _2006_F1_TECHNICAL_REGULATIONS.pdf

I've got the TiVo cocked, locked, and ready to rock for the 2001 World Rally Championship season on Speedvision.

Guess I better enjoy it now - Next year will probably be a Nascar talk show marathon.

As long as the modifications are equivalent across all the athletes competing in a given sport, won't this just make it all the more exciting for the viewer?

Mind you... faster isn't necessarily better, as shown by Formula One