Valencia Formula E Notebook – Part 1

The WAE pit fire that occurred at Valencia yesterday was the first of its kind for a traction battery in Formula E since the start of the championship in September 2014.
There had previously been two 12-volt ancillary battery incidents in testing at Donington and Monteblanco, and also at Long Beach in 2016 and in the Montreal parc ferme area when Nico Prost’s car caught fire but this is the first to involve a traction battery at a public event.
Although the 2024 calendar was announced officially earlier this month after the FIA World Motorsport Council meeting, an addition to the schedule could still be made with the possibility of the Portland event becoming a double-header doing the rounds in Valencia.
Additionally, Jakarta could still host a race with talks about a potential season finale taking place in August. Formula E has concluded its championship in August three times before with the 2019-20 and 2020-21finales in Berlin and the 2021-22 campaign ending in Seoul.
FEN understands that the second Hyderabad EPrix, which is scheduled to take place on February 10 was effectively saved by intervention from the national government. The local Government of Telangana had hoped to have hosted the race for another four years but the demise of the deal with ACE Nxt Gen looked to have made the race difficult to take place. Last season’s inaugural event was beset by operational and logistical challenges which saw the pits and paddock areas not completely finalised.
The FIA’s technical manager Alessandra Ciliberti is moving on from her role to take up a position in Formula One. Ciliberti was the project leader of the current Gen3 car and joined the FIA after serving an internship at the then named Toro Rosso team.
Formula E Operations/Holdings has seen several departures in the close season, most notably former chief of staff Hannah Brown and commercial chief Matt Scammell. An overall reduction in the headcount at Hammersmith, Formula E’s London base has been overseen since CEO Jeff Dodds took up his role early June.
Dodds is not on-site at Valencia test this weekend although he was present at a three day run that DS undertook at Varano earlier this month. He sampled the DS E-TENSE 23 during the media days.
These tests proved controversial after DS were granted additional days and being able to run at the full 350kW power instead of the 110kW as per the regulations. The rationale given for the special dispensation was ‘to maximise the opportunity for the team and the Formula E ecosystem.’
Oli McCrudden, who has been part of Formula E from the first season in 2014-15 as initially the senior event director has been promoted to Vice-President of Host Cities. His remit will be to ‘develop global relations with host cities and securing strategic locations for the FIA Formula E World Championship calendar. He will lead a team of experienced event directors who are the de facto CEOs of each race event on the world championship.’
The ERT Formula E team has shuffled its engineering team for the new season with former chief race engineer Mike Henderson moving to a factory based role. Chief Operating Officer Russell O’Hagan told FEN that this had “allowed us to make a number of well-deserved promotions internally.”
These include Nico Morel who moves up from performance engineer to looking after Dan Ticktum this season. Dan Moeller continues to work with Sergio Sette Camara.
Lucas di Grassi will once again work with Markus Michelberger on the engineering front this season. He’s the same engineer he worked with in his first stint at the team between 2017 and 2021. Prior to that di Grassi was engineered by Franco Chiocchetti who now works with the NEOM McLaren team through his engineering company RACEON.
Likewise, FEN understands that the Mahindra team will have a significant shake-up in its engineering leadership with long-time technical chief Lewis Butler set to leave the team at the end of the year. Butler is currently working his notice at Mahindra and is set to be formally replaced shortly.
Cyril Blais has been promoted to engineering manager at the Maserati MSG team. Blais, who engineered Max Guenther last season has taken over from Jeremy Colancon who recently left the team.
Peter McCool has moved on from his position as Head of Design at the NEOM McLaren team to start a position with Alpine F1 this month. McCool first worked in Formula E from 2014-2015 with the Amlin Aguri squad before joining Mercedes EQ in 2021. McCool was also a columnist and contributor to the-race.com
Nissan tester Victor Martin told FEN that he enjoyed another outing with the team after previously testing in Berlin in April. “I’m at a stage of my career when I’m in F2 to, and the goal will still be F2 fighting for the title,” he said. “F1 is still my ultimate goal but of course I’m trying with Alpine to keep a good relationship and Nissan is bringing me a lot of things also from my driver package.
“So, I can learn a lot of things and I can explore some areas where I will not be exploring. For me, I think it is just more positive than ever to be in a Formula E car.”