Roger Griffiths’ time started to get a whole lot more precious last November after he was voted in for a second term in to the hot seat of the Formula E Team and Manufacturer Association (FETAMA) office.
The Andretti team principal initially held the position of chair of FETAMA between 2016 and 2018 and will now fulfil the duty again until the advent of Gen4 in 2026. The position is voted by fellow team principals, as is the role of secretariat, which had been incumbent to present Andretti and former Venturi commercial chief Jim Wright since day one of Formula E. It is now taken by Lola Yamaha Abt sporting manager Frederic Espinos.
It feels like another strong leadership team after Ian James’ spell ended last November with the NEOM McLaren having been widely praised for his work, epically in nudging the governance door ajar.
This, is in relation to teams and manufacturers having more say in the future direction of the world championship generally as Gen4 gets set to change the Formula E game completely, is a key objective.
“I have to be honoured to be asked to come back and do it again,” Griffiths told Formula E Notebook.
“I think it’s a different role from when I did it in season three and four as the championship has obviously moved on a long, long way. We have a very clear vision of where we want to go.
Griffiths didn’t run on any manifesto items because he never put his name forward but his peers believed he would be the right man for the role.
Some of the things for me is really trying to consolidate what we’ve achieved over the last few seasons together as the FETAMA group. But I’ve started to feel a little bit of a separation in some of the thinking and that is natural because we’re all competitive.
“I think from the way that we run the championship, we need to be a little bit closer together. I’m fine with people having different opinions and all the rest of it and I think that’s healthy. But I think as a group between the competitors and the manufacturers, I it’s important that we stay closely aligned on the direction of where we’re travelling.
“So those are things I really want to focus on. And the big one coming forward is the next commercial agreement for Formula E under the Gen 4 generation. We need to work on that.
That is work in progress at present and there will be inevitable twists and turns along the way. The Gen 3 agreement took 18 months and saw periods of real contention but an agreeable agreement was finally reached at the time.
“We’ve got to get everybody around the table, all the key stakeholders,” states Griffiths.
“Teams, manufacturers and Formula E and work through where we can make it better for everybody. We have a vision of where we want to get to. It has to work commercially for all of us.
“That’s really going to be the main piece of work I can see. But I also want to engage more of the group too. I don’t want to be just the person in the paddock that’s running around on behalf of others and I really feel that to be successful we need the whole group engaged in the process.
“We need different people because everyone has different areas of speciality. Some of us are engineers, some of us are marketing, some of us are operational people. Let’s take the strengths of each of those individuals within the FETAMA group and get them to work together to feed into me and to Fred as well.”
