Formula E season preview
Fresh venues, a talent-packed grid, and new cars that can go the entire race distance make this the most important Formula E season yet
This weekend, the ABB FIA Formula E Championship enters its bold new era, it comes of age, the project comes to fruition. Whichever cliche you want to employ, this moment – as the Gen2 cars get ready to take to the racing stage – is a big deal for the electric championship. It’s a good thing, then, that it has 22 stars ready to shine in the upcoming 2018-19 campaign. Looking outside Formula 1, which has certainly had its share of questionable driving appointments in recent years, it’s hard to think of a truly comparable series when it comes to the skill level and reputation of the FE competitors. The DTM is probably the only one that springs to mind, and rightly so – it’s an unquestionably professional and competitive championship. But where FE stands above the German series is that
its teams are not united in manufacturer blocks. In FE, each squad is competing for its own glory, without a stable of aligned teams willing to provide assistance if needed. Having such a high level of talent has not always been the case for Formula E. In its first season, the series had 35 drivers and a good portion of them could not genuinely claim to come with glittering motorsport CVS. Things are different now – FE has secured the massive influx of manufacturers that it desired during its Gen1 era, and with major OEMS comes cash. In turn, that attracts the best drivers – although it should be noted that many of FE’S established stars, such as Sebastien Buemi, Lucas di Grassi, Sam Bird and Jean-eric Vergne, have been there from the beginning. Or the third race in the case of reigning champion Vergne. For season five, the combined achievements of the FE field are pretty blindingly impressive. There will be nine ex-f1 drivers (one of whom, Felipe Massa, scored 11 grand prix wins and nearly took the 2008 world title), three Macau Grand Prix victors, and two DTM title winners (including the most recent, Gary Paffett). There’s a GP3 champion and the driver he beat by just two points (Jaguar’s Mitch Evans and Audi’s Daniel Abt), two Formula Renault 3.5 title winners (Robin Frijns of Virgin Racing and recently confirmed Nissan e.dams recruit Oliver Rowland), plus Tom Dillmann, who won its Formula V8 iteration in ’16. Jose Maria Lopez brings his three World Touring Car triumphs, while Andre Lotterer is a triple Le Mans winner and Buemi took his first victory in the legendary race this year – those two also each possess a World Endurance title. Frijns and Lotterer are Formula BMW champions, and Frijns can also claim two Blancpain GT titles, while Lotterer has won titles in Super GT and Formula Nippon. There’s a pair of British F3 title winners (Nelson Piquet Jr and Vergne), three Formula Renault Eurocup victors (Massa, Frijns and Stoffel Vandoorne, who also happens to have the 2015 GP2 crown). Finally, Edoardo Mortara is the 2010 Euro F3 title-holder and a Macau winner.
So, what few weak links there were on the FE grid for 2017-18 – and there weren’t many – are gone. As well as the returning Frijns, Dillmann has earned a first full-season FE deal with NIO alongside the consistently impressive Oliver Turvey. For 2018-19, the FE regulars have been joined by a large class of rookies – seven in total – although that term considerably understates their standing in the motorsport sphere. Joining Paffett at new squad HWA is ex-mclaren F1 driver Vandoorne, while electric-vehicle advocate Alexander Sims joins fellow BMW factory driver and FE race winner Antonio Felix da Costa at what is now BMW’S works team – although Andretti still owns the entry. Lopez’s new team-mate at Dragon Racing is 2018 Formula 2 race winner Maximilian Gunther, and Massa has been partnered with Mortara at Venturi for his first taste of competitive racing since leaving F1 at the end of ’17. Rowland joins Nissan alongside Buemi, with Pascal Wehrlein and two-time FE race winner Jerome d’ambrosio in an all-new line-up for Mahindra Racing. But Wehrlein’s debut will wait until the second round of the season at Marrakech since he will not be released from his Mercedes contract and be free to drive for another squad until January 1 2019. Felix Rosenqvist will get an FE swansong in Wehrlein’s place for the first race, and briefly adds another two Macau GP wins and the 2015 Euro F3 championship to the grid’s tally. Two members of this rookie crop have been at the centre of two of the biggest stories during the build-up to the first race – the inaugural Ad Diriyah E-prix this Saturday – since pre-season testing took place in Valencia in October. The first is Sims, who helped BMW claim the fastest time on all three days of testing at the Ricardo Tormo circuit. That was quite a show of improvement from the squad that finished bottom of the standings in the 2017-18 teams’championship. It even led Audi team principal Allan Mcnish to give BMW the dreaded tag of ‘favourite’. “Testing went well for what you can really take from a fast, relatively unrepresentative circuit like Valencia,”says Sims.“it really seems like BMW has produced a good car. But at this stage everyone will say the same thing because it was pretty unrepresentative, and it’s only going to be in Riyadh and the following few rounds where we start to get a proper picture of where everyone is at.” The second is Rowland, who was only confirmed in the final open slot on the grid just two weeks before the season began. Alexander Albon had been announced as Buemi’s team-mate back in September, with a three-year deal at Nissan, but that arrangement unravelled in spectacular fashion on the first day of pre-season testing. Albon was in the Valencia paddock that morning, but never made it out on track. In the afternoon, the news broke that he was in the running for a drive with Toro Rosso in 2019. He would take no further part in the test because of the situation – which enraged Nissan and team principal Jean-paul Driot, who was upset at the way things had been handled by those advising the driver, and rather angry towards Albon himself. Rowland was put on standby and then flew to Valencia not knowing if he would drive, which he did on the final day. In the weeks following the test, Albon and Nissan set about unpicking their arrangement. Although he appeared on the official 2018-19 entry lists, it was always understood that this was merely as a result of his previous confirmation rather than an indication that talks were not progressing. In the end, the two parties agreed to a relatively amicable uncoupling, and Albon heads to F1. Driot was moved to tweet that“we cannot let good talents not follow their dreams”, making it clear that Albon had not burned his bridges with regards to FE and the e.dams/dams set-up. “What upset me a lot is that if he had done the test in Valencia, things wouldn’t have changed,”driot explains.“we would have negotiated for his contract to wind up and to go to join Toro Rosso. Nothing would have changed. It was a bad situation because he was there, he didn’t know what to do and he was embarrassed like we were. This is also why I wrote this tweet. Motor racing at a very high level is a small club and we always meet the same people year after year. Tomorrow, we will see how it goes and perhaps he will be very happy to come back with us one day in Formula E – why not?” In the end, both Albon and Rowland gained massively from Red Bull swooping in to claim Albon – whom it dropped from its young driver
“ALBON HAD BEEN ANNOUNCED AT NISSAN, BUT THAT ARRANGEMENT UNRAVELLED SPECTACULARLY”
programme in 2012, after a disappointing first year in cars. Albon gets to fulfil his F1 dream, and Rowland – who raced in the 2015-16 FE race in Punta del Este as a stand-in for Mahindra – gets a serious deal with a major manufacturer in a high-profile championship. “It was quite clear from the start that DAMS were keen to have me,” Rowland says of the weeks following Valencia.“then it was their job to convince Nissan that I was the right guy. I’ve got a big opportunity with Nissan and that can be long-term, so I’m not focused so much on F1 any more. It’s a massive opportunity and I’ve got to make it work.” With its grid finally settled and packed with talent, the 2018-19 grid is perfect for FE. The championship, in turn, has delivered a spectacular new car. It has lost one element of what made FE intriguing – the
“BMW HAD THE HEADLINE PACE IN TESTING, BUT REJECTS CLAIMS THAT IT IS AHEAD OF THE OTHERS”
mid-race car swaps, which, given their anxiety-inducing nature, were also a focus of much critcism. But FE CEO and founder Alejandro Agag sees the introduction of the Gen2 machine and the switch to a single car as a critical moment for the championship. “I feel great,”he says ahead of the start of the new season.“the car looks absolutely amazing and I think the battery is a huge leap forward and is what we were looking for. It is the fulfilment of a four-year project, which now comes to fruition. We said we were going to do this, but we didn’t know if we were going to be able to do it, and today we know that we are going to deliver it. For us it’s almost like‘mission accomplished’ with the Gen2. We had to start with two cars; the technology was not there to do it in one go. Now the technology is there.” For the first race of season five, FE heads to a new frontier: Saudi Arabia. The 1.5-mile, 21-turn track has been built in Ad Diriyah, the country’s first capital, which is located on the outskirts of the modern equivalent, Riyadh. While still very much a street track, it is unusual for an FE circuit. There are wider elements to encourage overtaking, and a long segment of flowing turns, which has been described by some as the track’s own ‘mountain’section along the lines of the Guia circuit in Macau. Speeds are expected to be high here, and the drivers will only need to feather the throttle for most of the corners between the sharper Turns 5 and 14. “We can expect a little bit of chaos in the first race,”says Agag.“it’s all new, the drivers have to get used to these cars, how to drive them.” The form in testing was tricky to decipher, which makes picking a pre-season favourite very challenging. BMW had the headline pace, but Audi and DS Techeetah were right in there too. From long-runs analysis, NIO came out on top, but there were few genuine comparisons available. For its part, BMW rejects claims that it is ahead. “Allan Mcnish said that we were the favourites,”says BMW motorsport boss Jens Marquardt.“thanks, but he just wants to distract from the fact that Audi and Techeetah are the ones who set the tone. I wouldn’t write off Virgin and HWA either – they have always shown that they can be very fast at a top level. If we can go anywhere from the beginning and be competitive, then we’re doing a good job.” On the driving front, the usual FE suspects head into the campaign as the favourites – di Grassi, Buemi, Bird and Vergne. Frijns will likely pick up where he left off at the end of 2016-17, while Lotterer improved vastly over his first season in the category and he ended the year as a regular frontrunner. Sims and da Costa have what it takes to lead BMW’S line and, if NIO’S performance in testing translates into real form, then Turvey will be eyeing a first FE victory. This is FE’S most important season so far. It can’t afford to stumble now – but, given the quality of the drivers and the technical strength in depth of the teams, it’s highly unlikely to do that.