Mexico City Formula E Notebook – Part 1

• The possible use of aluminium skid-plates on cars is believed to be a step nearer and could be used later this season. Formula E Notebook understands that the initiative will aim to increase the visual spectacle of the championship and has been lobbied for by Antonio Felix da Costa since he told The Race website last season that he had approached Formula E about the idea.
• Long-time Renault and Nissan technical director Vincent Gaillardot has called time on his extensive stint with the team and will leave his position as technical director next month. The ultra-experienced engineer joined the operation in 2013 and was integral to the success of the Renault e.dams’ team in Gen1. He will not attend either of the Mexico City or Diriyah races.
• Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds travelled to China and Hong Kong in November, the first time a Formula E executive has been to the former EPrix venue since 2019. Dodds is believed to have met with potential future promoters to discuss the feasibility of Formula E returning albeit at a different location to the previous central harbourfront area.
• Additionally, Formula E are also still looking at the potential of a city centre street race in China in 2025 or 2026. Both Shanghai and Shenzen are favourites at present to potentially host a race with the latter believed to have already had some contact with Formula E.
• A Formula E simulator has been placed at Tokyo Metropolitan Governments offices in the city to help promote March’s race. The promotion for the event is being spearheaded by Formula E in conjunction with local marketing and production agencies Dentsu and Hakuhodo.
• FE Notebook understands that 8,500 grandstand positions will be available at the venue which is located in the Big Sight area of the city in Ariake area of the Japanese capital city.
• Jake Dennis reckons that his dominant display at Mexico City 12 months ago will not be possible for anyone in 2024. Dennis told FEN that “I can assure you it will not be as easy for anyone.
• “Even if it was, no one would allow you to pull away like that anymore. Everyone knows how big the tow-effect is so even if you have that big pace advantage, they’re better off spending the energy to follow you and being in a better position. No one will do what I did last year unless someone has made gigantic leaps over winter, which I doubt.”
• Several sporting amendments have been made ahead of the 2024 season. One of the changes (Article 28.4) will see the jokers allowed last season scrapped for use of MGU, inverters and gearboxes. This was a wholly expected move after the first season of a new rules set was completed.
• Article 25.8 of the 2023/24 sporting regulations sees additional clarity on the handling of tyres, particularly ensuring they remain in the garage of competitors at all times. This was to remove some ambiguity on the previous wording of the article. Some teams experimented with putting tyres on their cars early when the sun was facing their pit boxes last season, thus generating additional heat and pressure.
• ERT’s Sergio Sette Camara is targeting top ten finishes at street tracks this season and was honest to FEN on the chances of the newly named team recreating some of its 2023 heroics.
• “Other teams did a bit more testing, we missed a test in Majorca, so a little bit less testing,” he said.
• “We’ve seen how the team’s improved in Valencia. I think we were in the bottom end of the charts most of the time. I’m a bit apprehensive, personally, to see if that will remain like that or if we will be able to do results like we had last year when we were in the mix. We were at least in with a chance of finishing a top ten if it was a good day, in Valencia we were nowhere near that so I hope our Valencia performance is reflected here.
• “I think once we get to the normal race tracks, especially the urban ones, it’s better for our car.”
• Pascal Wehrlein has a new engineer for the first time in three seasons as ex-Andre Lotterer engineer Fabrice Roussel is moved back over from Andretti to replace Kyle Wilson-Clarke who is expected to take up a position at DS Penske shortly to engineer Stoffel Vandoorne.
• Jaguar TCS Racing engineer Phil Ingram, who previously engineered Sam Bird, has been promoted to the position of Head of Performance at the team. Ingram will however continue to race engineer this season, looking after new recruit Nick Cassidy.
• Former Envision Racing engineer Bertrand Fermine has joined the Andretti team to work with Norman Nato this season. Fermine previously spent three seasons working with Robin Frijns at Envision between 2018 and 2022.
• Chinese multi-national manufacturing conglomerate BYD have a presence in the Mexico City paddock this week. FEN understands that they will also be present in Sao Paulo in March. BYD are known to have spoken to Venturi in 2015 about the prospect of entering Formula E but nothing became of the talks.
• Mahindra’s compensation test, after it lost time to the pit fire in Valencia, ended unsatisfactorily when poor weather disrupted its running in Spain in November. Nyck de Vries was limited in his running meaning that he arrives in Mexico City with by far the fewest laps in a Gen3 car across the 22 driver grid.
• Mahindra announced it had launched an AI-generated influencer called Ava, established designed to “showcase the team’s journey in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, and towards a more sustainable future for our planet.’
• But the team discontinued the initiative after a social media outcry earlier this week with team principal, Frederic Bertrand saying that “Nurturing diversity, inclusion and innovation is at the heart of Mahindra Racing. Your comments hold tremendous value. We have listened, understood and decided to discontinue the project.”
• ABT will celebrate its 100^th race in Formula E this Saturday. The team competed with Lucas di Grassi and Daniel Abt in the first five a half seasons before being forced to leave the championship in 2021 after Audi’s withdrawal. However, they returned in 2022 and will again run di Grassi this season who took the season three title with the squad in 2016-17.
• NEOM McLaren has welcomed Udemy, Lego and Castore as suppliers/licensees since testing at Valencia in October. Udemy, Inc. is an education technology company that provides an online learning and teaching platform. As of June 2023, the platform has 64 million learners, over 210,000 courses, and more than 75,000 instructors teaching courses in nearly 75 languages, with over 870 million course enrolments
• Formula E Notebook partners RaceOn GmbH has recently launched an Instagram page detailing all the latest news from the global engineering consultancy company. The page can be found here.
• Formula E announced last month a multi-year media partnership with Chinese national broadcaster, CMG, airing every race of the season live for the first time. The new deal will see all 17 races in Season 10 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, available live on CMG’s CCTV platforms.

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