Big Cat Sets Ultimate Pace on Final Day
Mitch Evans set the fastest overall lap of the six three hours sessions held this week, claiming the best time in the final session on Friday morning. The Jaguar TCS Raving driver’s 1m27.461s lap proved to be 0.141s quicker than Kiro driver Dan Ticktum in the final session of the day, which was red flag prematurely to retrieve Jean-Eric Vergne’s beached DS Penske. Last season’s champion Pascal Wehrlein placed third overall, peaking on a 1m27.658 best.
Women’s Test Round-Up
The all-female test on Friday afternoon at Circuito Jarama was headed by Nissan’s Abbi Pulling, who set an ultimate best of 1m30.889. That time was 0.320s ahead of Jamie Chadwick in the Jaguar I-Type 7, while Bianca Bustamante completed the top three for NEOM McLaren.
There was disappointment for Chadwick’s teammate for the day, Lilou Wadoux, who didn’t turn a lap at all after ergonomic difficulties getting her comfortable in the seat. Jaguar TCS Racing stated that the Super GT driver had “visited our HQ in Kidlington for both a seat fit and to test in our simulator. Unfortunately, when Lilou jumped into the Jaguar I-TYPE 7 for her final pedal check here in Madrid, her seat was not as comfortable as she would like.
“We are investigating the reason as to why the seat fits were not consistent,” continued the statement. “We are all really disappointed that Lilou was unable to take part in the women’s test session as we know she is a fantastic racing driver with incredible talent who has made a positive impression on the team this week. Lilou will have another opportunity in the future to support the team and test a Jaguar I-TYPE.”
There were incidents during the three hour session for DS Penske’s Jess Edgar and Kiro’s Simona de Silvestro. Edgar spun and lightly scraped the front-wing of the DS at Turn 4 but returned to the fray quickly. However, de Silvestro’s test was curtailed instantly after she damaged the underside of the Porsche in a suspected kerb strike that damaged the Porsche 99X Electric chassis and battery and limited her to just nine laps of action.
Edgar proved to be the fastest on 300kW power, posting a 1m33.155, 0.220s ahead of young Welsh driver Ella Lloyd in Sam Bird’s NEOM McLaren Nissan.
Nerea Marti, who was classified 13th in the times on Friday afternoon, told FEN that her home region of Valencia, which was devastated by floods last week, was “really sad.” Marti said she had been “helping all week” her friends and family deal with the aftereffects of the disaster.
Marti’s Andretti teammate for the test, Chloe Chambers, finished in 15th position and told FEN that the work she had done prior to the test at Andretti’s UK base in Banbury had “helped a lot” and that “90% of the work” she had done would “apply as it involved learning all the procedures and the characteristics of the car.”
When asked if she saw Formula E as a viable career goal, Chambers said that even though she had already been announced with the F1 Academy Red Bull Ford for 2025, she was hoping to “put on a good enough showing to maybe get an opportunity in the future.”
“My impressions of the Formula E paddock and the programme that has been going on has been really positive and its somewhere I’d love to get more involved with in the future.”
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds and one of the architects of the women’s test at Jarama told FEN that the starting point of a long-term initiative of increasing opportunities for women in the all-electric world championship was put in place to “showcase their potential.”
“What’s important to me is, wherever the start point is, we create more opportunities, and they start to demonstrate they can close the gap.
“Because I think if they can demonstrate they can close the gap, and some of these teams will start to employ them as development drivers. Then they’ll get rookie test time, and then they’ll hopefully find their way into competing and driving in the main championship.”
Lola Yamaha Abt tester Miki Koyama arrived in the paddock on Thursday from Japan where she has been competing in the Super GT 300 category this season in a Mercedes AMG GT3 car as well as a programme of Lamborghini Super Trofeo Asia. The Toyota Gazoo affiliated driver Koyama posted an impressive fourth quickest time overall in the session.
Tech Torque
Trying to identify any kind of early season hierarchy is almost impossible to ascertain in Jarama due to the fact that the circuit as new to all and that it had such a quirky and abrasive surface allied to high energy targets.
“It’s difficult to say really (on the pace seen),” Nissan’s Dorian Boisdron told FEN. “I mean it’s easy to be the World Champion of private testing! It was a good, let’s say benchmark for everyone here (at Jarama) as some packages are in the ballpark in terms of performance, clearly.
“I think we’ve been following the trend that we were targeting, which is already satisfying from a technical point of view in a kind of comparison to others, but I think it’s a bit too early to say where exactly we are.”
FEN understands that some teams are lobbying the FIA and Formula E to increase the tyre allocation from two to three sets of Hankook tyres for the Sao Paulo opener next month. This is a reaction to fears that teams will forsake running in the Free Practice sessions to maximise their allocation in qualifying and the race for fear of wear rates and degradation on the unique Anhembi Sambadrome layout.
The 2024-25 sporting regs state that: ‘Per single-race Competition, each race number may use no more than 4 new rear and 4 new front all-weather tyres of the same specification. Per double-header Competition, each race number may use no more than 6 new rear and 6 new front all-weather tyres of the same specification. All tyres must be strictly identical.’
DS Penske technical chief Phil Charles added that “the new tyre definitely has a deg (redation) curve now.
“So, you’ve got to choose how you use that curve. It’s not infinite anymore and so at some tracks the curve is very shallow and you don’t mind doing 10 runs because it’s still pretty good,” added Charles.
“But at other tracks after four runs, it’s starting to lose it, so you won’t run that necessarily or you’ll be wasting your time. You’ll see track to track, that we’ll have a different approach and really, it’s a weekend approach now. It’s not just a half an hour of qualifying and then the race itself.”
The FIA has unveiled special flashing yellow or red lights on the rear of the Gen3Evo car in the event of cautions or race suspensions on the track in an effort to reduce the reaction times of drivers if incidents occurs on the race track. These will be evidenced via the LED lights on the tail fins of the cars this season.
The use of the new for 2024-25 4-wheel drive mode has officially been confirmed as only being available to be used in Practice, Qualifying Sessions duels, start races and the Attack Mode phases of races.
But the FIA has also outlined to teams that in a situation where ‘a car sustains a mechanical damage and needs to be retired from the track, it will be allowed to apply positive torque on the front powertrain only for the purpose of pulling the car to a safe position outside of the track and help with the track recoveries. This exceptional use is to be allowed only under the Race Director’s discretion.’
The directive to teams also confirmed that ‘under ‘no circumstances is it allowed to use the FPK in traction to re-join the track or to reach the pits and re-join the session afterwards.’
March on Miami! Promo Showcase?
Formula E is starting to form a potential marketing focused event in the U.S to fill the two month gap in its calendar next March. Formula E CEO, Jeff Dodds, was playing cards close to his chest in Jarama but did say that the plans would be “a unique event that fills the gap.”
“And that unique event has to bring new potential fans to Formula E. It has to allow the teams to build their profiles. It needs to allow the drivers to start to build even better profiles for themselves to give them more exposure, and it needs to be something that could be scalable into the future,” added Dodds.
“I don’t want a one-and-done type customer event. If it works brilliantly, I want to be able to scale it in the future. That’s what we’re working on. We’ll announce something shortly. There won’t be the big gap in the calendar, there will be something in the middle of it.”
FEN understands that teams are generally supportive of the concept but quickly require clarity on key aspects such as potential running of cars and costs of the project which could take place in or close to Miami and also act as a promo event for the Homestead race in April.
“I think cost cap wise it is definitely something that the entertainment or communication has to be out (of),” Mahindra Team Principal Fredric Bertrand told FEN.
“The problem is not cost cap, it’s budget. We need to find the money to finance those type of operations and this is not in the plan right now. We have a budget to run a championship and to race within a championship only.
“I think we are supportive to any ideas which would help the championship to be better promoted and create more buzz,” added Bertrand.
Paddock Staffing Updates
Jake Hughes’ 2022-23 engineer Alan Cocks recently left the NEOM McLaren team and will join the Jaguar TCS Racing squad shortly. Cocks has extensive Formula E experience after stints with DS Virgin Racing, Dragon and Mercedes EQ.
Former Jaguar TCS Racing and NIO 333 tyre engineer Marta de Pfaff Ganduxer has moved on from her role to work in the World Superbike series. She has been replaced by Oliver Milner who has vehicle dynamic engineering experience prior to joining Jaguar/WAE with Infiniti and Renault Sport.
Porsche’s tyre and vehicle dynamics guru Matteo Marini left his position to work for Scuderia Ferrari in F1 last summer. Marini’s place in the team has been taken by an engineer from within Porsche’s wider motorsport staff who worked with Marini in a hand over scenario last season.
Commercial Matters
Nissan has announced a four-year global partnership with Petromin Corporation, a leading mobility solutions provider in the Middle East. The partnership will be primarily focused on the company’s EV charging subsidiary, Electromin, as the business looks ahead to a wider adoption of electric mobility in the region.
Mario 1977 Jarama Fever Comparison!
The Andretti team provided FEN with an interesting piece of trivia last week as it detailed that Mario Andretti, who won the 1977 Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama in his Lotus 78 F1 car set a pole position lap time of 1m18.70s with the then track length of 3.4kms.
The length of the circuit tested on by Formula E 47 years on was 0.4kms longer and included the temporary pit-straight chicane which equated to around a four second increase to what it would have been without it in place. The fastest lap set over the duration of the test was 1m27.602s by Mitch Evans on Friday morning.
With both cars approximately 470bhp (Cosworth DFV vs Gen3Evo) it is reasonable to suggest that both cars are of a similar overall pace! The fastest ever lap by an F1 car at Jarama came in 1980 when Alan Jones lapped in a 1m15.467 best in his Williams FW07.
The time loss of the temporary chicane approximately four-seconds at Jarama, it meant that the Gen3Evo cars stacked up well reasonably against recent respectable machinery at the venue. Yelmer Buurman lapped in a 1m20.011s in his Superleague Formula Panoz in 2009 to set the outright lap record at the venue which stands to this day.
FE TV Insight!
Formula E will announce its TV talent squad shortly with regular hosts and pundits Billy Monger, Andre Lotterer, Karun Chandhok, James Rossiter and Catie Munnings set to be part of that team, while social media reporters Alexa Rendell and Katie Fairman are all set to add insights.
Tom Brooks will continue to be the lead commentator for the host Formula E broadcaster this season. But Brooks will miss the opening round in Sao Paulo due to a clashing commitment. He will be replaced by experienced broadcaster Ben Edwards, who worked on the Jakarta and Portland races in 2023.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds hinted to FEN that his team is close to a deal for terrestrial coverage to return in some capacity in the UK and Germany this season. Formula E is known to have been talking to several broadcasters including ITV, Channel 5, ProSeiben and RTL recently.
“Of course, the perfect scenario is we continue to offer a paid product where people can watch everything they want to watch in super high quality, and we also have a brilliant partner that allows us to showcase the racing on a free to air product in the UK,” said Dodds.
“I hope we’ve got that balance and we will aim to announce something very shortly, which I hope will land with the fanbase in the UK really well, and I hope when it lands they appreciate that we do listen to their feedback and we’ve tried to find a solution that works for all parties.”
Doctor and The Medics!
Formula E has adapted its official medical provider for this season with the stalwart MDD company having been replaced by the British based Vantage Event Medicine company which includes several elements of the staffing that was under the MDD banner over the last six seasons.
Image credit: Formula E Media
