Izzy Hammond hit the headlines after she hit the wall in Jeddah last week after completely disassembling Zane Maloney’s Lola T001.
The resulting damage is extensive, an effective write-off, the total bill of which will be close to seven figures. That will be an unpleasant invoice for Formula E Operations to take but as agreed with the competitors, digest it they must.
Hammond appeared to take way too much speed into the Turn 13 left-hander, much more than she had before. The inevitable understeer wasn’t dealt with before she applied the brakes and attempted to wrestle the wheel. It is clear from slow mo’s from her flailing hands that she lost control of the car before impacting the wall.
It was a mistake, one which will have been made by most of the guest drivers on the day. It was just she made it at one of the quicker corners, and a combination of inexperience and panic proved very costly indeed.
Prior to her laps, Formula E Notebook spoke to Hammond, the content creating daughter of former Top Gear presenter and broadcaster Richard Hammond.
“I’m really lucky I get to do a lot of driving and a lot of driving different things, but racing with single seaters is not anything I’ve touched before,” said Hammond.
“Formula E has seen probably a lot of people starting to get into it recently, and it’s just so exciting and the battles are insane.”
FEN sat down with Hammond just after she had completed the track walk with the team last Sunday lunchtime.
She had already been warned by Lola Yamaha Abt driver Lucas di Grassi that ‘this is the hardest Formula car you could drive.’
“Oh brilliant, I thought,” chuckled Hammond.
“I did some sim stuff, which really helped with learning the track and learning how much I can brake, but nothing compares to actually driving the car. And it felt a lot more like a car than I thought it would, if that makes sense.
“There was a couple of moments where I could feel it slide, and I could feel myself catch it. Because it’s so alien, I thought ‘once it snaps, it’s gone.’ But actually, you do have quite a lot of control over it. It’s more just the acceleration. It’s just so, so fast.”
Hammond saw her main challenge being part physical and part mental, saying that “with no power steering” it was “tough because I’m 4’11” and I’m not very strong.
“No power steering combined with a lot of really tight chicanes is very difficult. And knowing that, like in a go-kart, you could kind of slide your way through them a little bit. I’m not going to go sliding in this thing.”
Hammond was expansive too on how Formula E can appeal to more existing motorsport fans, even perhaps purist racing fans, still sceptical about the growing world of electrification.
“I think F1 going sort of half electric now is probably going to help, because it’s the same thing and there’s still amazing battles on track, really impressive drivers, engineers, mechanics. It’s all the same. It’s just a slightly different kind of fish. It’s so cool. How can it not be cool?
