Oh come on, 5 mpg is has nothing to do with real world fuel economy "Oh yes were only giving them 100kg of fuel for 300km of racing so they it will make it a very fuel efficient sport" they could have gone with 150kg (or even better 200
) and let them run more power and run at full power to the end of the race, now its going to be the fuel efficiency wars.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the technology and progress and pushing things forward, I just don't think this is one of them or you may as well just switch straight to Formula E. When it comes to efficiency, sportscars/prototypes have more to do with impacting on road car technology than F1.
But anyway, while we're on it, I was thinking about this the other day; trickle down to real road cars, everyday cars not supercars etc, how much stuff was advanced from F1? These are just my thoughts;
-traction control/abs, started in F1 but were quickly banned and got most of their development in road cars
-active suspension, banned from F1 but not really used in road cars, maybe some passive was
-pneumatic valves, not used anywhere else
-turbos, most performance turbo cars got their influence from WRC over F1 and big players in the turbo era didn't even make turbo cars (eg Honda/BMW) and the efficiency turbos have nothing much to do with F1 (till next year maybe)
-carbon fiber, not really much use in road cars even aluminium isn't that widely used
-crazy exotic metals used for blocks, exhausts and wheels, were all banned
-carbon brakes, we get carbon/ceramic brakes for loads of money, but straight carbon, well you wouldn't want them on the road and not really on your everyday mondeo
-semi auto box, yep we now have those and they are common at all levels of cars
-KERS, does anyone make a car with kers? i'm sure there are other recovery things, not sure. Didn't Volvo make a kers system that is better than a F1 one, not sure, but i read that somewhere, but they still don't use it yet.
-ground effects, nope not much
-aerodynamics, not sure how relevant they are to road cars, but I'm sure there is some advantages gained.
*edit to add
that makes me wonder, they push the boundaries of CF in F1 from the mid 80's. Now we (well maybe not we here at retro bike, but in general cycling community) are all riding around on CF bikes with CF bars/stems/posts/cranks/wheels and frames and they are not prohibitively expensive, yet on cars it is still the realm of supercars. I can understand chassis and rigid structures, but unstressed panels like front wings, bumpers and doorskins could easily and fairly cost effectively be made from CF over steel or aluminium for some weight savings. At the moment they only seem to appear on the odd bonnet or roof of a "lightweight" version of a sports car (eg M3) for a hefty increase in price.