Merely days into the new year, a whole eight of them now (at least it was the 8th when I first started typing this outburst) the first race weekend draws nearer. This never used to be the case back in the day... which does make me feel old... in recent years the dark and bleak off-season could only be filled with what is now called LOORRS (Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series). LOORRS is an American off-road circuit racing series - sort of like Rallycross, but without the tarmac sections... and using trucks. The broadcasts were from the season gone, so they were several months behind any form of live coverage - but it is marvellously insane. Sometimes the winter months were dashed with the effective dregs of the elapsed year - very delayed coverage of ARCA, a low division of NASCAR and Trophee Andros ice racing. The Andros Trophy was at least replayed in the same week as the actual event - as it was inherently a winter sport - but the actual spectacle falls far short of any expectations. The ice racing does feature the likes of Alain Prost and Olivier Panis - with a recent cameo from Romain Grosjean (yes, it is a French alpine based series) but the tracks are too narrow and the cars do the entire lap sideways so overtaking is virtually impossible without brute force. So we are left with LOORRS - which sits amongst a sea of mediocrity and disappointment and immediately defies all of it. A variety of different trucks and dirt buggies race each other on purpose built dirt tracks with huge jumps and banked turns. It has been the chosen winter entertainment for many years now - hell, I even watched round three on Christmas Day... because that's the world I live in. So if any of you folk have MotorsTV, which I think is on Freeview now, go have a look, it shouldn't be that entertaining, but it is.
However, the winter months got a little more interesting this time around because something new, and live, entered the arena. Even though it did start in September and extends into late Spring - Formula E has been dumped into the off-season period and it is magnificent, at least in some respects it is anyway.
Formula E was thought up some time ago, and then it seemed very fancy if not a little over-ambitious. The idea of running a high level international championship with all-electric cars was met with both anticipation and scepticism. Even now the series exists and has been running for a few events in Asia and South America - the plans for the future look equally as far-fetched. This debut season can be considered in many respects to be a very long test session, both for the new technologies and for the response and interest from the motorsport community - in terms of fans, drivers, teams and prospective manufacturers. On the face of it Formula E represents an evolution of racing, one that is more in line with international targets for electrification of transportation. Underneath all of this is something clever - almost using the potential fame and recognition that comes with a new emerging high energy sport to bait manufacturers and technology companies into joining in. Once they get on board - the pressure of competition forces them to develop new storage technologies and energy recovery systems to stay at the front. Ultimately like many other devices designed for the track, these inventions and innovations filter down through mass production into the consumer market. Allowing people like you and I, OK just you - my bank balance is a little on the minimal side for fancy technical gubbins - to see the benefits in road going electric cars - increased range, faster charge times and that sort of thing. But all of that is a few years away yet, when control over Formula E car design is passed onto independent teams and major manufacturers - for now a it is a stock single make category running effectively the initial prototype version of this new age.
The preliminary development car has seen three races so far, and overall reliability has been no better or worse than can be expected - in terms of technical failure they seem no more fragile than this seasons F1 cars were in the opening rounds. Naturally there are to be some criticisms of the base model, it would be nothing short of a miracle if it was perfect straight out of the box. Obviously the sound was going to be an opening sticking point - a veritable storm of complaints welled up across the internet and the pit lane when the world first heard the new F1 V6 engines. Show them a car that makes virtually no noise and they all lose their minds - admittedly it does take some getting used to. The first all-electric race I saw (on TV obviously, like I'd go outside) was part of the Trophee Andros championship entitled "Trophee Electrique" involving small battery powered buggies for lack of a better description. As it was an ice racing series all you could hear was the occasional scraping sound of the metal tyre spikes on parts of the track where the ice had worn through to the tarmac underneath. It was simultaneously surreal and intriguing - a couple of years later the same set of cars were among the categories taking part in the Grand Prix de Pau event. Like in the earliest days of motorsport - it was the French taking the initiative and promoting the idea. On an enclosed street track like Pau the electric cars can be heard - a subtle whine from the motors amidst the gentle and intermittent noise of tyres being pushed a little too hard. I can certainly appreciate the big angry sound of powerful combustion engine giving it full beans - especially if it happens to be a dull thunderous roar you get in something like a Corvette or Viper GT car, and the SLS safety car - but there is a level of detail you don't get underneath all that noise. While the world argued about the loss of the V8's in F1 - I came to enjoy the clarity of other things you were then able to hear - pit radio, locked wheels and the crowd getting involved.
However, in Formula E the organisers have clearly decided that the lack of noise is a problem especially from a trackside perspective. Maybe they have a point, who knows - I haven't been to a race of any kind in person so can't really judge noise levels in the flesh. But on the TV broadcasts all those ambient sounds we've been hearing in F1 this season aren't as pronounced as you'd expect. If I think back, even the little electric buggies racing around Pau had more tyre noise than the Formula E cars do. Maybe that is a symptom of the cars having more grip and therefore sliding around a lot less, or maybe it's related to how the broadcaster sets up trackside microphones. Potentially the cars need to be faster - which was another of the running complaints about the category. Either way series organisers have decided that questionable 'electro' music is the perfect answer... hence the introduction of what they call the "Formula EJ" a title which is cringeworthy at best. I half expect and hope that at the end of the season the "EJ" will remove his mascot sized costume helmet and reveal himself to be Eddie Jordan. Thus making the Formula EJ out to be E.J. himself... Personally I see the EJ as a nonsensical gimmick to try and make electric cars seem 'cool' and down with the kids, while covering for a perceived lack of noise problem which isn't really a problem.
The format of the series has come under a lot of fire as well - mostly because it does expose a few flaws in the technology and presents a solution which almost defeats the objective of the whole concept. Each race weekend doesn't really encompass an entire weekend - qualifying and the race take place on the Saturday and nothing happens on the Sunday. This is designed to encapsulate everything into a nice fan-friendly package for those at the track - more value for money. This works with the city-centre street track locations, which are often shorter and more compact than the sort of street circuit used in Indycar or Australian racing. A knock on effect of the shorter track lengths qualifying is broken down into to clusters of cars running in isolation - to prevent congestion and blocking issues. So far so good, making plenty of sense at this point. The race itself is about an hour long - on par with a GP2 race length - slower Formula E cars mean that the total race distance is shorter. But, there is a slight problem - at the moment the energy capacity of each car is not enough to allow continuous running for an hour. I initially thought there would be two options to this problem - either charge the car during a pitstop or put new batteries in. Now because charging a Formula E car is going to take a few hours I imagine, that won't really work in a pitstop time frame - even Marussia would be disappointed with a 6 hour stop. Does that mean a Formula E stop involves replacing the batteries with some fresh ones and just heading back out again. No. Instead a driver will swap cars - which looks as cumbersome and daft as it sounds. During a pitstop the driver parks his/her current car in the pit garage, jumps out and gets in a second one - therefore a two car team has to bring four complete cars to each race. For a championship flaunting it's 'green' credentials, the emissions cost of the freight will ultimately offset any savings made by ditching internal combustion engines. In the interests of safety with drivers running from car to car, there is a minimum pit time which must be adhered to, minimum times can restrict strategies to an extent but are not uncommon in other categories where drivers share a car.
The final potential weakness in this new and developing platform lies within the sporting regulations - which in themselves are for the most part simple and homogeneous in comparison to racing categories the world over. Various parameters are monitored to prevent anyone gaining an unfair advantage in a single-make series, in the same way that they are in F1. Yet in amongst all the other convention rules and approaches is something called 'Fanboost' it has become a term both loathed and despised in equal measures across the internet - and occasionally outside of it. This FanBoost idea involves getting the fan community to vote for their favourite driver each weekend - after a cut-off time the top three vote winners will be allocated the FanBoost Bonus. It works in the same way that KERs used to - the winning drivers can press a button and for five seconds they get some extra power. In essence it allows common folk like you or I to influence the race... I tend to agree with the masses of people who suggest that this is not such a good idea. Formula E should be about competition - and shiny futuristic gagetry - yes social media is part of that future and interacting with the audience is important - but all it has done is turn a sport into a popularity contest. Hopefully as the season wears on things like this will be modified and changed - after all it is work in progress. For example the formation lap was axed after round one because it was far too slow and consumed unnecessary energy, even so - a formation lap of some kind would be nice even if only as matter of tradition and ceremony.
With so much apparently wrong with the new technology and this new championship it should be awful and a waste of a Saturday afternoon viewing. Right? But no, it still works and works well - each of the three races so far have been intriguing in their own right, even the woeful Beijing street circuit for the opening round provided overtaking and great racing. Further more the strength of the grid is fantastic - so many recognisable names with proven track records have been very capable early adopters of the sport. We've had Bruno Senna, Nicolas Prost and Nelson Piquet Jnr in the same cluster of cars racing with one another. Formula E has also provided a new home for a lot of drivers with F1 in their past - including a number thrown from the Red Bull program. Jean-Eric Vergne arrived on the grid last race and immediately put the car on pole (yet somehow still wasn't given a space in F1...). The series also boasts an entry list starring Oriol Servia from champcar fame and Marco Andretti from ALMS and Indycar along with Karun Chandok, Jarno Trulli, Squadron Leader Heidfeld (I know Renault Squadron was only a thing in 2011, but the name stuck) and a one off appearance for the legendary Takuma Sato. You could stick an entry list like that in a grid full of bin wagons and the outcome would be brilliant, which does make me wonder why the FIA Bin Wagon championship has never been suggested. But stick them in the Formula E car and it works wonders - as they can get the most out of the hardware and test it to destruction... occasionally literally. The Squadron Leader himself can testify to the strength of the Formula E chassis after his WEC team-mate Nico Prost nerfed the German off track at the very end of the first race. Prost damaged Heidfeld's suspension in the attack and the Squadron Leader was unable to avoid spinning over a huge piece of curbing which launched the car up into the catchfencing where it bounced and flipped in the air before landing on its side. It was safe to say Prost Jnr was not going to be winning the FanBoost vote after that. Heidfeld was then pushed into the wall in the second race by a different Frenchman before picking up both a pit time and a excessive power usage penalty in round three...
For a debut season so far Formula E is a massive success, the core concept and vehicle design is spot on - but there is plenty of room for improvement outside of that. The organisers have already stated that this season almost acts as a proof of concept model and a launchpad for future iterations - predicting a world where teams and manufacturers get far more involved to build their own cars and technologies rather than being supplied with the same chassis per team. Hopefully that would pave a route away from having car changes mid-race and short restrictive circuits. Other longer term plans suggest having charging lanes built into the circuit so drivers can charge the car by driving on certain parts of the track - I think the technology and the price points will have to do a lot of catching up to do before that becomes a reality. But that's the point - encouraging technological development through sport, and a sport specifically designed to address the problems of energy security and reducing emissions we are all faced with. This is a wonderful series and one that will need investment from rich car manufacturers and tech firms to grow and blossom into something which in a couple of decades time could be more important and more relevant than F1. One can only hope that it doesn't fall the same way that A1GP did - because A1GP was a brilliant idea which delivered brilliant results but dwindling investment and organisation saw it crumble. Hopefully being a FIA run series the prognosis is a lot more stable, once it gains momentum and credibility I think it can cast aside the daft ideas of FanBoost and the Formula EJ and stand up on its own four wheels as something well worth looking out for. That is of course if you can tear yourself away from watching LOORRS instead.
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