President Letter Fallout
Nyck de Vries partly blamed the media for the furore surrounding the sensational letter that was sent direct to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem last week and which was signed by all 20 drivers. The correspondence outlined several requests for changes in the officiating of Formula E races.
De Vries told Formula E Notebook, which is owned by journalist Sam Smith, who broke the story via The Race that “unnecessary attention” had been a key factor in the controversy.
“I think you guys have been trying to create enough, let’s say, unnecessary attention about the letter,” said de Vries. “I think it has been taken entirely out of context. I think the letter came from a good heart with good initiatives. We just wanted to raise some points. There has always been a constructive dialogue. So more than that, I’m not going to say about it, but you definitely made it bigger than it ever was, in my opinion.”
Lucas di Grassi and Oliver Rowland represented the drivers in terms of devising the letter, and Rowland outlined to The Race his feelings on it, a week on from it being sent, telling FEN that he “felt like there’s been so many drivers’ briefings now, where there’s been so many unanswered questions, and they’re disjointed and a bit messy, and you come out not really knowing anything.
“It was time to just get it down on paper and assess how we do things. I mean, all the teams here analyse what they can do better, all the drivers analyse what they can do better, and we share that between us. I just think it’s good that we should also have some visibility on things that we maybe don’t feel have been perfect.”
Many team principals are known to have been highly unimpressed with their drivers regarding the sending of the letter without their explicit knowledge. When asked if the move was regrettable, Jaguar TCS Racing boss, Ian James, said he thought that “hindsight’s a wonderful thing, and there’s all sorts of ways it could be dealt with.”
“I think in an ideal world, yes, you’re always consulted or made aware of these things beforehand,” he added. “But at the end of the day, it’s also not a major issue that we weren’t. I don’t think it would necessarily change anything, or it was our place to try and influence it.”
Stellantis and Mercedes
Formula E Notebook can reveal that Stellantis is working with the Mercedes High Performance Powertrains company in the UK regarding the Gen4 powertrain it will run in Citroen and Opel car from next season onwards. The collaboration is centred upon the electromagnetic development of the Powertrain. Mercedes HPP did some similar work with Mahindra in the Gen3 era.
Stellantis has formed a close unofficial relationship with Gwen Lagrue, the driver development lead at the Mercedes F1 team over the last few seasons. This has resulted in Theo Pourchaire being given an official development role at the F1 squad, while Citroen will also run Mercedes young driver Joshua Durksen at this Sunday’s official rookie test.
Evans’ Future
Mitch Evans’ future employment has been a smouldering topic of the Formula E paddock since the pre-season test in Valencia back in November. Out of contract at the end of this season the Kiwi, who has driven in every single EPrix that Jaguar has competed in, is in discussions with several other teams about a possible move for the start of the Gen4 period.
His new team principal Ian James told Formula E Notebook recently that the results so far this season are “unlikely to have the ultimate influence over the directions we take going forward. I mean, it sounds almost a bit of a cop-out to say it, but the focus is genuinely very much on making sure that we perform at this end of the season to the best of our abilities.
“Mitch has put himself with that win (in Miami) in a good position,” added James. “We’re at early stages of the championship, we’ve had different winners in every race so far, so things are mixed up and he’s very much in the hunt. But no, that in itself doesn’t have too much sway on the decisions that we’ll ultimately take and not on the timing either.”
Soucek the Steward
The drivers advisor to the stewards this weekend is ex F2 and GT driver Andy Soucek. The U.S domiciled Spaniard last filled the role in the Gen1 era of Formula E. Soucek last visited an EPrix at Miami in January, when he was in his role as via president of motorsports at the Circuit of the Americas, which could host a Formula E race in early 2027.
Henderson’s Relish
CUPRA Kiro chief engineer Mike Henderson is back on direct driver duties this weekend as he picks back up engineering Dan Ticktum’s car. The Northern Irish engineer joined the team, when it was known as NIO, in 2019 and worked extensively with Oliver Turvey, before moving to Ticktum in 2021 and then on to a chief engineering role. Ticktum’s previous engineer Nico Morel has moved on to Alpine in the FIA World Endurance Championship for this season.
More Team Movements
Donal Curran, a former Envision and Andretti performance engineer has joined the CUPRA Kiro team as a new Head of its Vehicle Performance department. Curran also worked briefly for the NIO team in the Gen2 era after a spell working for the Hitech operation. Curran, who appeared in Jeddah, was also on the books of renowned engineering consultancy RaceOn, and will be predominantly factory based for CUPRA Kiro working on the teams Gen4 project which is highly likely to be as Porsche’s sole customer.
Jeddah was Envision engineer Ben Scott’s final race, with his replacement Jamie Gomeche taking over after shadowing Scott since the Mexico City EPrix. Gomeche previously worked at Dragon Racing in Gen2 and then with Max Guenther at DS Penske last season, between that he was working for the Vector Sport endurance racing team.
Why Nerea Marti is a Rookie no show
Despite there being four women on the Rookie Test entry list for this Sunday at Jarama, Andretti’s development driver Nerea Marti will not be one of them as the team elected to run F3 drivers Freddie Slater and Callum Voisin.
Team principal Roger Griffiths explained to FEN that “we just hadn’t put Nerea’s deal together when we made the decision around the rookie test drivers. It was just the timing of when all this came together was ahead of when we confirmed the extended agreement with her.”
Rookie Test Tyre Tweaks
The FIA has amended the tyre allocation for Sunday’s Rookie Test in order to ‘promote meaningful and significant track time.’ Two full sets will now be allowed as opposed to one although it is not mandatory to ‘allocate the sets of used tyres from the event to the corresponding competitor’s race car number, so the allocation of tyres is at Competitor’s discretion as long as the maximum number of sets is respected and these are coming from the Competitor’s Madrid e-Prix tyre quota.’
Andretti was forced to change its rookie line-up at the last moment when original choice Louis Sharp was injured in an F3 crash at the season opening race in Melbourne earlier this month. The Kiwi suffered back injuries in a shunt with his Prema teammate James Wharton.
Hyundai Following EV Rewind Trends
Hyundai confirmed earlier this month that it is discontinuing its Ioniq 6 electric cars in the U.S. The high-performance Ioniq 6 N was set to arrive in the U.S later this year. The Hyundai owned Kia brands EV6 GT will also not be heading stateside as the Korean company re-calibrates some of its EV forecasts and growth plans.
Hyundai seriously looked at Formula E back in 2024 and was in discussions with the NEOM McLaren team about a possible future collaboration before deciding to initially concentrate on entering its luxury brand Genesis in to the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Party like it’s 1981!
The last world championship single seater race to take place at Circuit del Jarama was the legendary 1981 Spanish Grand Prix. That was the race deemed to be the later, great Gilles Villeneuve’s finest as he headed of a train of cars (Jacques Lafitte (Ligier), John Watson (McLaren), Carlos Reutemann (Williams) and Elio de Angelis for a substantial part of the race. The top five were covered by 1.24s.
Tenuous Formula E links include Nelson Piquet, the father of inaugural Formula E champion Nelson Piquet Jnr racing a Brabham (although he retired after an accident), Mario Andretti – father of former Andretti Formula E team owner, Michael – taking eighth place, and one of the ambassadors for the former Santiago EPrix, Eliseo Salazar racing an Ensign to 14th position.
The race was held on June 27, 1981, the day the first ever paintball game was played in New Hampshire, U.S and a day before the Tehran HQ of Iran’s Islamic Republican Party was destroyed by a powerful bomb that killed 74 government leaders as they met.
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