TICKTUM AND GIOVINAZZI HEADLINE ROOKIE CROP

Of the three rookie drivers gracing the 2022 Formula E grid, the two with arguably the biggest draw have found seats with the historically unfancied teams in the championship.

Dragon Penske Autosport has snared the services of Antonio Giovinazzi following his departure from Alfa Romeo’s F1 team, while Dan Ticktum has called time on FIA Formula 2 to join NIO 333 alongside the enduring Oliver Turvey. There’s two ways of cutting it: either they’ve both got low-pressure environments in which to learn Formula E’s intricacies and nuances, or they’re set for a season of struggle with equipment that will seldom offer opportunities for decently sized points hauls. The two drivers are also up against it in terms of mileage, having had to call their pre-season testing programmes short and hot-foot it to Saudi Arabia for their F1 and F2 duties.

“The car is really different from F1, or the cars I’ve been in over the past few years,” Giovinazzi explains. “[On the first day] I was really sort of confused and had a lot of things to learn. But the main issue for me is the braking, because [in F1] you can really attack so much on the braking because you have so much downforce as well.

But here you cannot. I’m struggling with this. But I remember when I drove in 2018 the first car, the Gen1, it was the same.

“I’ll focus more on the sim to set up myself more on this car. But before race one I’ll not have many miles for that, so it’s like this, but I’m sure during the season I can improve. And this is my target.”

For Ticktum, the NIO seat represents something of a lifeline after being dumped from the Williams F1 junior programme and with no other obvious opportunities to move up in the world of singleseaters. Turvey will provide stern competition, and a well-known benchmark for Ticktum to measure himself against.

Formula E’s group qualifying format had been a largely unpopular system of deciding the grid among the drivers. Track evolution meant that the frontrunners populating the opening group had minimal chance of making the cut for superpole, while the last group were given the best chance of progressing into the final stage.

Hopefully the knockout format will be more meritocratic. Qualifying now starts with two groups, with the initial Diriyah E-prix session featuring one car per team in both divisions of the grid. These opening stages will be 10 minutes long with pitstops permitted, and drivers will be afforded the standard 220kw power limit in the group stages.

The top four from each will progress into the quarter-finals, where drivers will duel against each other at 250kw in a pre-determined draw: first in group A will face a time trial against fourth in group B, A2 going up against B3, A3 facing B2, and A4 tackling B1. The fastest from each will progress to the semi-finals, with the winners of those bouts going through to the pole-awarding final.

The two finalists make up the front row, with the drivers knocked out in the semi-finals occupying the second row based on their times. Those who didn’t progress from the quarter-finals will occupy fifth to eighth, while those knocked out in the group stages will be allocated a grid slot based on their positions, biased towards the group hosting the eventual polesitter. If the polesitter came from group A, for example, then the fifth-placed driver from that group lines up ninth on the grid, and group B’s fifth-placed driver occupies 10th. That continues down the rest of the grid, with group B’s slowest occupying the final spot on the grid.

Diriyah will provide the true test of the new format, but the drivers have already been receptive to the changes ahead of the first round. “I was quite vocal about [the old system] last year,” says reigning champion Nyck de Vries. “I think generally, the changes will lead to a kind of more consistent and stable qualifying result, and I expect we will see a bit more of a common group of people – teams and drivers – who are fighting in the top 10.”