Formula E founder and editor Sam Smith sat down with Envision team boss Sylvain Filippi and 2015-16 Formula E champion Sebastien Buemi recently to talk all things Gen4.
In this excerpt from the conversation, Filippi and Buemi talk over the Gen4 project, what it means for Formula E and where the car should race as it gets set to embark on a much more powerful and quicker new era soon.
Sam Smith: “When you look at that step to Gen 4 now, it’s a different challenge obviously. Seb, you got experience of the car. What were you absorbing from the car? What was it telling you?”
Sebastien Buemi: “Obviously, it was nice to drive it. I feel very lucky that I was able to drive it (the Jaguar development Gen4). It’s obviously a different car in size. It’s a lot bigger. It’s heavier. It’s way more powerful and it’s four-wheel drive all the time. There are two levels of downforce, so you add a little bit of complexity as well. And there’s lots of things you can do on the diff that you are not allowed to do now. So somehow, it is the same complexity, but another level with adding stuff like the diff, the downforce.”
Sylvain Filippi: “First of all, the hydraulics. It’s a highly complex car right Seb?”
SB: “Yes, because nowadays, we cannot do much on the diff at all. You know, with this new car, we’ll be able to do a lot. So, the problem is, you keep adding new variables into an equation that is already very complex.”
SF: “It’s going to make the Gen4 car incredibly impressive. That’s the aim, right? We want to make the car as fast as it can be. Which is a very clear brief. But for sure, the way to achieve that is by having a car that is quite complex.”
SB: “You’re not going to make it close to F1 by making it very simple. At some point, it’s got to be.”
SS: “Yeah, so the good part of that is strategically the software is open and free again isn’t it? The software engineers can exploit much more?
SF: “Yeah, and they have more optimisation. But now, it’s just the breadth of knowledge, right? You need to know about mechanical setup, you need to know about the controls, and you need to know about diff and about the aero. There is a big range.”
SB: “Yeah. Aero is a big thing now.”
SF: Because the importance goes to the square of the speed, right? So 250kW to 300kW, it’s not 50kW kilometres. It’s a massive difference. So aero modelling for the sim becomes a lot more important. We have to be really good at aero modelling. It all becomes just very grown-up motorsports. But still, with a team of 50 people on my side and a pretty restrictive cost cap, efficiency is the name of the game more than ever. We have to be good at all this stuff. Controls on all the software. Diff. Reliability. Aero. Tyres, and all with a relatively small team. It’s quite impressive. I mean, I would say that. But what we achieve with the size of the team we have is impressive.”
SS: “But obviously, it’s more expensive as well.”
SF: “Of course, it’s more expensive. But it will translate into much faster lap times. I’m quite excited because we get a car that is going to look really fantastic. You can see this car at the exit of corner. Foot down. And just the way it picks up speed. It’s pretty cool. So, it will be all worth it. But to be competitive, we’re going to have to be really good at all these things.”
SS: And the obvious next question is, where are we going to race it? There’s a lot of debate as to where Formula E should be. And it’s going to be quite a fine balance of finding which track can exploit the great stuff of the car and how you can manage the race in the sporting format and so forth. I mean, Seb, as a driver, you’ve seen all eras and all generations of Formula E. What would you like to race in Gen4 in terms of not specific circuits, but the style of circuit and what might benefit the championship from where you actually race?”
SB: “I think it’s going to be a mix of street circuits still because I still believe that it’s extremely good to have the street circuits. But what you need to understand is that this car is very fast but it’s a lot bigger. So, when you have a small car that is not that fast, you can go to a lot of different types of circuits and if you end up on a big track, ok, you can still race.
“Now with a car like this, it’s going to be difficult to go to a circuit that is very small. Not only just because the car takes a lot of space but also the run-offs are becoming issues because it accelerates so strongly.
“You want to have still a good show. So, I guess for Formula E, it’s not going to be easy to choose. Obviously, the location is important, and the show is important and of course the safety is important. It’s very complex to find the right type of circuit. I think we’re going to go more towards tracks that Formula 1 uses, but it’s maybe not yet ready to go fully to those tracks. But it’s going in that direction.
“It’s going to be a bit in between. In my opinion, it’s going to be very difficult to continue to race in the smallish tracks. Maybe a bit early still on the long tracks too. Because a faster car, you go to a bigger track, you consume a lot more energy. Then the race becomes short.”
SS: What about this model? A model around a big stadiums. We saw it in Seoul. The ExCeL, Miami a bit?
SB: “I don’t know if you’ve seen IndyCar. They’re got that new venue in Arlington. You’ve seen that? That seems like a good track as well. It’s not too big, not too small. There’s plenty of tracks. Long Beach, Austin. There’s a lot of possibilities.”
SF: “What we cannot do is not show the potential of the car. That would be a big mistake. We’ve done the work and investment for putting it in that car. It needs to have the space to stretch its legs.”
SB: For me, you go to Mexico, you can go to the F1 track. People will say, maybe the saving is too much in the race. But you go there, it’s a strong statement. Because you’re going to show the speed of the car. Because the altitude and the downforce does less. I think it’s going to have good performance on one lap. Really good performance. It’s a big statement. A bit like when we went from the two cars to one car. Now if you can go to the big track and show the speed, it’s going to be a big statement for Formula E. It would be very sad to go to a track where you can’t show the speed.”
SF: People like us three have been here from the beginning. We almost have to put the emotion aside and think ‘what is the best for that car’? We built a car for speed. So, you’ve got to base the tracks around that because that’s the car we built.”
