A (racing) line in the sand has not so much drawn. It has been branded, steaming and red hot, right on to the racetrack.
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries doesn’t court the limelight in Formula E at all. Quite the opposite. In fact, he’s not often seen at races at all, but he was at a few last season. And since he and his family moved ‘across the pond’ from the U.S to the UK, he’s started to pipe up a fair bit.
He was bullish in London last autumn when he attended the Mahindra Season 12 launch, and prior to that he did a feisty if a little awkward piece to camera with FEO CEO Jeff Dodds at the London EPrix last July.
Then……and then there was this, under sapphire blue skies in the pitlane at Paul Ricard on Tuesday afternoon.
“I have a message to my cousins at Formula 1,” Fries said to mouths that became increasingly ajar as he progressed.
“Basically, halfway doesn’t make history,” he added, clearly referencing the notional 50/50 internal combustion engine and electric split that F1 has moved towards with its 2026 rules.
“Having half an electric engine? Forget it. It’s a Frankenstein!” added Fries. “All the way [100% electric] is the only way.
“This car and the Gen5 and the Gen6, it’s not a race anymore. It’s over; this championship is going nowhere but up. We’re totally committed to this thing.”
Boom! Formula E rattled the cage again, but this time it appears to be an actual cage fighter.
“They’re (Liberty) super smart investors, long-term investors, and some of the language Mike uses is that he invests in any business as though he’s going to own it forever, so he treats the asset like it’s an asset for a lifetime,” Jeff Dodds told FEN around three hours before Fries’ speech.
“He’s investing in its growth. He really, really can see the potential of this series, and he can see the trajectory of motorsport, sports rights, electrification, and he can see all the component parts are in place. Obviously, you then need the right environment to be able to grow in, and the right environment means a stable environment: economically stable, socially stable, politically stable.”
But there’s some volatility around EV’s at present and Dodds knows that the combined forces of weird geo-politics and still some scepticism over electric cars has slowed down the forecasts and projections for OEMs.
“There are peaks and troughs, but what he (Fries) knows is that if you want to grow this sport into a super profitable entity for everyone involved, the car needs to continue getting better and better.
“He wants to see growth across all metrics, and that includes the performance of the car.”
Fries had a close up look at the Gen4 and he must have liked what he saw. Last October at a foggy Abingdon Airfield he got his mind blown out by the Jaguar Gen3Evo development car. Should he get in a Gen4 then expect more bolts to be driven in to Frankenstein’s neck shortly after.
