Formula E Notebook sat down with reigning world Formula E champion Oliver Rowland at Jarama on Thursday afternoon. The Nissan driver, along with Lucas di Grassi, was a key instigator of the letter to FIA President last week which outlined several points that all 20 drivers want to see improved in the series.
FEN founder Sam Smith, who broke the story on Tuesday, asks the questions:
SS: So, the letter! Now there’s a bit of time passed obviously you and Lucas were top of the billing there, and you got unanimous support of the drivers, which is pretty impressive actually. Not many series get that completely across the board. Was that an important part of doing that, Olli, in terms of putting a letter like that to the most high-ranking official? You had to have all 20, right? That was key?
OR: “I think so. Look, I mean, as kind of striking as it is, we’re only trying to help make the situation better. I think all 20 drivers want the championship to do as well as possible, whether that’s teams, race format, stewarding.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but I feel 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, so it was time to just get it down on paper and say ‘OK, let’s assess how we do things.’
“I mean, all the teams here analyse what they can do better, all the drivers analyse what they can, and we share that between us. And I just think it’s good that we should also have some visibility on things that we maybe don’t feel have been perfect. “
SS: And the initial response from the FIA was quite generic. But when it comes to tomorrow and you’re meeting everybody formally at a drivers’ briefing, is that the time to discuss this? Or is it, between races? Do you almost need a bit more of a formal body between races, have a sit- down or a conference call or something like that?
OR: “I think so. I mean, definitely here’s not the time to discuss the contents of what was in the letter.
“I had a phone call last week with someone from the FIA, and it was good, it was productive. And again, if you read the letter, which I think you’ve read, it’s not us saying that you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ve done this wrong, you’ve done that wrong. It’s like, how about these ideas?
“So, how about we implement some of these things? How about we look for people with formal experience as the driver steward? Because when we have Alexander Sims, in my opinion, it’s great. You can always go in there and he’ll sort of say, ‘you’re pushing your luck’, or ‘you’re right, and he tells the steward’.
“I think that’s really positive. I think in all of it, we just want to improve, and I don’t think anyone should take it personally. I think sometimes, okay so, yes, it went to the president, but I would argue that there’s been enough warning signs that it should have maybe been dealt with before that happened.”
SS: If you did have a formal body that could interact with the FIA, is that a mechanism you’d have used before going for that (letter) option?
OR: “Well, that’s the next step. We have to have something that can protect, not just about driving standards, but about everything, whether that’s safety, formats, and again, it’s to work together.
“We have good opinions and stuff. We’ve been around racing a long, long time. The teams have that already in FETAMA. They have a lot of experience, and it should just be about a collective shared effort to bring ideas to the table, and then they should think about it.”
SS: Some are blaming us, the media. Do you think it’s actually too sensationalised in terms of portraying it in the media?
OR: “If I’m annoyed with anyone, it’s the person that put it into where it got to (The Race). I don’t know who, but I reckon you do!”
SS: Is it regrettable that the team principals didn’t know about it?
OR: “That’s one thing, I think. If you look at it, and honestly, I know you wrote in your article that one team principal is aware. I told my team after the drivers’ briefing in Jeddah that it was an idea that we were going to probably do.
“What I didn’t do was then say it’s gone. I told them, look, I think this is something that we all want to do, and it was fine. But I think we should have given them notice that we were going to send it. I guess the argument to that is, knowing our teams, had we told them that we were going to send it, they would have convinced us not to. We should have just told them it was gone and here’s a copy, basically.”
SS: What are the next steps?
OR: They need to look at it. They need to say to us, ‘we think this is a good idea’ or ‘we don’t think this is a good idea’ and we move from there.
“I think what’s clear is that we all have a feeling that things haven’t been as good as maybe what they should be, and we need to work together on that. I think steps forward are maybe to use the break before Berlin to have a few drivers discuss it on behalf of the drivers with them and hopefully have some agreement on where we move from there.”
