The driver

As noted in the main feature, there is no telemetry from car to pit available to Formula E teams. Consequently, the driver plays a vital role in energy efficiency.

‘This is by far the biggest learning aspect for any new driver to the category,’ says Ash Willoughby, energy management and controls engineer at ERT Formula E team. ‘The level of energy management is to a higher degree relative to tyre or fuel saving strategies adopted in other categories.’

Drivers must therefore develop an understanding of where it is efficient to use energy or, in some situations, where it is better to save energy for the sake of holding position. This intuition only comes with practice and experience with the car.

‘Very simple things like driving line selection or driving inputs [throttle, brake and steering] can have a noticeable impact on lap time efficiency. For a driver to have this understanding means they can adapt to adverse situations, like rain or edge cases where the energy target decreases rapidly,’Willoughby adds.

Drivers also have to master absorbing the information the car is giving them via the dashboard and translate this into messages to the pits. Given the tight, street circuit nature of the majority of the Formula E calendar, this is no easy task.

‘This component also takes time to adapt to, simply due to the changing circuits and the sheer amount of information the driver needs to be aware of, covering elements such as control system settings, lap count, energy codes, information on cars around them, car state of health and so on,’ concludes Willoughby.

So, while the racing may not be as high speed as some other formulae, the workload of the drivers is substantial and requires far more than just an innate ability to drive by the seat of their pants.