25/26 Calendar Clash Avoided?
Formula E’s provisional calendar is set to be ratified by the FIA later this month at the FIA World Motorsport Council. A probable 12 date schedule is planned with a start on December 6 at Sao Paulo and a finish in mid-August at London ExCeL Arena.
The possibility of at least one clash with the FIA World Endurance Championship is believed by FEN to have been avoided after its first European date, possibly to be held on March 21 in Madrid, would mean a clash with the opening WEC round in Qatar. This is widely understood to be provisionally pencilled in for March 28.
SIC Future?
The Shanghai International Circuit is likely to host a third iteration of the Shanghai EPrix next summer with an early July slot a likely probability. Speaking to Formula E Notebook from Shanghai, FE CEO Jeff Dodds said that “this is a very, very high quality circuit in China, in Shanghai, but it’s also an hour from the city centre.
“We saw the incredible interest and appeal when we did the test run this week with a car (Sebastien Buemi driving) in the city centre with thousands of people wanting to get a look at it.
“I think it would be wonderful at some point to be able to race downtown in the city of Shanghai, maybe that’s a one off experience, because it’s very difficult, I suspect, to get permissions to race there, and then you come back to the circuit when you’ve generated more interest,” continued Dodds.
“But also, as our cars get faster, and you know the details of the Gen4 car and how impressive that’s going to be, I also think there are going to be some circuits where you want to showcase the full potential of the car, and some of these big circuits, like Shanghai and Mexico City will allow us to show kind of the blistering top speed and the improvements that we’re seeing from the car, generation to generation.”
Shanghai Debrief: Angry Ticktum on Brutal Barnard
CUPRA KIRO driver Dan Ticktum criticised some of the dubious manoeuvres on display in Saturday’s race, telling FEN that “moving under braking or moving under coasting has always been an issue in this championship, especially with these peloton races in the last two years.
“You need a different set of rules for Formula E because it’s not moving under braking; it’s moving under coasting. It’s a different rule to Formula 1. You can’t have the same set of rules.
“What he (Taylor Barnard) did (when defending third position late in the race) nearly caused a massive accident. The delta speed at which I was coming at him was 40kph, and he moves right at the last minute and nearly causes a massive crash. He shouldn’t be able to do that. The FIA agree, but they say that technically it’s not against the rules, so the rules need to change,” concluded Ticktum.
Vergne Explains Saturday Shunt
Jean-Eric Vergne described the incident in which Nick Cassidy suffered a puncture at the T11/12 complex in Saturday’s race, saying that he “overtook Edo (Mortara) on the inside of T10 and we made contact and we were side-by-side.
“I feel sorry for Nick (Cassidy) because I guess Edo and I were just fighting for that position in that corner and I mean when you have a car just on your neck you don’t really see that there is a third car,” added Vergne.
“It was an unfortunate event for Nick. But I mean it’s what happens in those low-speed corners and it’s difficult to go three wide and that’s what happened. I need to look at the onboards, but quite often when I come close to Mortara, he thinks that I’m going to back off. I guess not today.”
The incident between Vergne and Mortara that spun Cassidy was investigated by stewards but concluded that ‘no driver was wholly or predominately to blame.’ Additionally, the contact occurred while a red and yellow striped flag was being displayed at the corner, which is deemed to require drivers to reduce speed and be aware that the tyre’s grip could change. It also warns drivers to be careful in the section it is deployed at to avoid the risk of losing control.
Charles’ Peloton Musings
DS Penske deputy team principal Phil Charles told FEN that he believed the first ever high-intensity pack-race/peloton race run in conjunction with the Pit Boost “was a little quicker early on and saw a bigger spread of attack mode usage than we expected through the race,” said Charles.
“It was one of those races where at the front you needed to keep your elbows up to stay in the lead group but also be patient not to use attacks or too much energy. It was very easy to get pushed back a couple of places and end up in the melee.
“Max (Guenther) did this amazingly well all of the race. On the flip side, JEV, who started more in the middle of the pack, commented early on that it was a ‘jungle situation’ and so he decided to go patient in the first half of the race and then progress more aggressively towards the end. This worked out pretty well but it doesn’t always go to plan in these peloton races but today it did – so we are obviously very pleased.”
Guenther suffered a second powertrain isolation issue in as many events on Sunday after stopping on the track with what appeared to be a similar malfunction to the one he suffered in the first race in Tokyo.
More Maserati Pit Boost Misery
The Maserati MSG team suffered more Pit Boost despondency after a second issue in as many events for Jake Hughes and also an issue for team mate Stoffel Vandoorne that compromised Saturday’s race. FEN understands that it was largely a team inflicted problem and not an issue itself with the Fortescue Zero supplied hardware.
Commenting on the issue and how it affected his race again, after an issue also wrecked his first Tokyo EPrix, Jake Hughes said: “The race was looking very strong; I was leading at one point, cycling through the top three. There were some things that weren’t perfect in the race, but the main thing was we had a Pit Boost failure for the second race in a row.
“That put us at the back of the pack, and we went all in on getting up the grid, leading to us running out of energy on the last lap. When you’re put in this position with the pit stop, you have nothing to lose, but we do need to understand why this happened because it’s cost us today.”
Mixed Conditions, Mixed Feelings
Lucas di Grassi declared “mixed feelings, because I started fourth, but I didn’t have the pace” after a second points score from three races with ninth place in Shanghai on Sunday.
“The car was very different from qualifying, where I was confident, and it was behaving well, with a good balance. In the race I suffered with the loss of rear end, the oversteer, massively oversteer, low speed, high speed, everywhere. So, I think something is wrong, we need to check it, because I had no pace. I think finishing on the points was the best I could do, and I take these two points,” said the Lola Yamaha ABT driver.
Jake Dennis rued one of his most forgettable weekends in Formula E in Shanghai with just a ninth and 17th place finish to show for his efforts. The Andretti driver explained to FEN that there was a “few head scratches after leaving this weekend.”
“We just lacked a bit of pace and we definitely still need to analyse and go through everything,” said the Andretti driver.
“Tracks which are low in temperature or low degradation, we perform quite well in the racing, so Monaco, Tokyo. Just the more abrasive the circuits the more we seem to struggle. Definitely we need to find some answers coming into the last sort of stretch of the championship.”
Jakarta Race Info
The next round of this seasons ABB FIA Formula E World Championship at Jakarta will run to 38 laps with a 38.5kWh usable energy allowance. The last time Formula E raced in the Indonesian capital was, unlike this year, as a double header. On that occasion races were run at 36kWh and over 36 and 38 laps respectively.
Rookies Ramp Up
The Berlin Rookie test on Monday 13th July is set to again see the likes of Alex Dunne, Jak Crawford and Theo Pourchaire get further running with McLaren, Andretti and Stellantis respectively. But FEN has also learned that rookies without any prior experience in Formula E such as F2 racer Oliver Goethe and F3 rising stars Alessandro Giusti and Santiago Ramos have been approached by teams recently.
Mikkel Jensen, who part in the Jeddah FP0 session in February for CUPRA KIRO, will not be able to take part in the Berlin test as he is competing in the Sao Paulo 6 Hours at Interlagos the day before.
NEOM McLaren’s Ian James alluded to possible future plans to open up more running for rookies at races in the run up to the Gen 4 era in 2026-27.
“I’ve got no doubt that one of the things that we as a championship need to work on is ensuring that we’ve got the opportunity for more rookies to come through,” James said. “We discussed this again with the FEA and the FIA on Friday. They are super motivated to make sure that we can unlock that as well. I think in the next year or two, we’ll see some format changes to bring some more rookies into this paddock.”
Roberts Farewell
Formula E’s Vice President of Business Intelligence, Matt Roberts, has left Formula E Operations after four years in the role. He joined FEO from F1 where he held the position of Global Research and Analytics Director.
“When I joined in 2021, the previous Insight team had all left, so I had to rebuild a whole new team, and rebuild faith and integrity into our data which at the time was being questioned by external stakeholders,” said Roberts.
“The team won the ‘best in house team’ at the industry Auras whilst taking home awards at the MRS and Sports Technology awards. We also won the much desired internal ‘team of the year award’ in 2023. As well as the awards, it has been a great privilege to work for the sport at a time when it has seen record growth in TV audience and fandom, and I am proud of my team’s contribution to supporting this growth over the past 4 years.”
Stats and Facts
In winning Saturday’s race Maximilian Guenther ensured that he has now scored more than one victory with three separate teams – BMW i Andretti, Maserati MSG and now DS Penske. Only Antonio Felix da Costa has completed a similar achievement, with the 2019-20 champion winning multiple races for Andretti, DS Techeetah and Porsche.
Guenther’s seventh Formula E win last Saturday put him, for 24 hours at least, on a par with Nick Cassidy, who then took his eighth on Sunday. Guenther is eighth in the all-time winners list, also on the same victory tally as champion elect Oliver Rowland.
Nick Cassidy’s Saturday win put to bed a 17 race stretch where he had not stood atop the podium. His last win came at Berlin last May. For context, in the 17 races prior to that win at Tempelhof, Cassidy had scored five race wins with Envision and Jaguar TCS Racing.
Conversely, Mitch Evans’ dreadful series of results continued with the Kiwi posting his 10th consecutive non-score since winning the opening round at Sao Paulo last December. Despite Cassidy’s win on Sunday, Jaguar remain eighth in the teams’ standings, albeit now a much closer five points to seventh placed Andretti.
TAG-HEUER Porsche’s non-score on Saturday was the first time the team had not troubled the points scorers since the first Misano race last April. That was the race in which Antonio Felix da Costa won but was excluded for a non-catalogued throttle damper spring.
To Le Mans…
While some drivers will be taking a well-earned break from racing for a couple of weeks, nine drivers will be heading to the Le Mans test day next Sunday. These are Norman Nato (Cadillac), Sebastien Buemi and Nyck de Vries (Toyota), Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Eric Vergne (Peugeot), Pascal Wehrlein and Nico Mueller – as reserve (Porsche), Robin Frijns (BMW) and Antonio Felix da Costa (AF Corse LMP2).
Felipe Drugovich, who is strongly linked to replace Nyck de Vries at Berlin next month and has a Le Mans seat with the Cadillac Whelen team Hypercar team, could make his F1 debut for Aston Martin should regular driver Lance Stroll not be passed fit for his home race in Montreal.
