Despite being a global competition, the UK’s relationship with Formula E is ironclad in the union flag from the viewpoint of the all-electric world championship being organised and promoted from Formula E Operations Ltd’s headquarters in Hammersmith, London.
All bar three teams – Nissan, Porsche and Citroen – (although DS Penske has some technical facilities in Paris, the team is actually run from Witney, Oxfordshire) are run out of the UK.
The TV production is run out of the UK, via offices and production facilities in London, while the batteries are supplied by Fortescue Zero who are based in the same Oxfordshire facility as Jaguar. So, a great deal of Formula E is inherently British.
But when it comes to a race venue Formula E has a very interesting history to be told.
Pre-2014 several venues were looked at, including a possible return to racing on the same south London location that used to run F2, F3 and touring car races in the 1960s and 1970s – Crystal Palace. It never got re-started.
Donington Park, an initial home of the series, was not seriously propositioned for a race. But some tentative talks with Brands Hatch did occur, as did a scoping out of a possible track around Horse Guards Parade in central London, although this was not developed in to anything remotely serious.
So, it was Battersea Park, just south of the River Thames that hosted two EPrix events in the summers of 2015 and 2016. It was a quaint location but the track was too narrow and the protection of the park became an issue with some residents close by. By the autumn of 2016 its future was over with no possibility of a return.
For the next three seasons therefore, there was no British race until an innovative deal to put the EPrixs on at the London ExCeL Arena became reality in the summer of 2019.
But the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the process of actually running a race until July 2021. That was when Jake Dennnis took his second EPrix win the day before Alex Lynn so memorably claimed victory on the streets of his home city.
So, London ExCeL will host its sixth Formula E event in August and it has, on the whole, been an excellent venue. But now comes the Brands Hatch era. Yet, were there alternatives? Particularly a street track?
“It’s very difficult in the UK to find that street circuit because of space requirements,” Formula E’s VP of host cities, Oli McCrudden told Formula E Notebook recently.
“We can find a track, we can create a loop that will go around, but finding the paddock and event space that we actually need is nigh on impossible, that’s one of the really big challenges to it.
If it’s a pop-up circuit or on an airfield Formula E could probably find dozens of cool locations in the UK and they have looked at some. But the truth is, if they were going to do that, the costs of building a brand new circuit on a new location would most likely be prohibitive. The London ExCeL was expensive at a purported average of somewhere around €20m per season. A pukka street circuit would likely cost the same, if not more.
“You might as well go to somewhere that’s already been built, and you’re going to really show off on that space,” adds McCrudden.
So, were there were conversations other than Brands and Silverstone?
“There where conversations in London and also Manchester, and we will keep on exploring,” added McCrudden.
“We also had a bit of a look at Edinburgh, and we had various other interesting enquiries come out of other places. Bournemouth was one at one point and Sam Bird was engaged in some of those conversations, and if I go back many years, there was even a request from Clacton for consideration.”
For non-UK based readers Bournemouth in Dorset and Clacton-on-Sea in Essex are two classic British seaside resorts. They feel like the most unlikely locations for an international motor race. As its stands they still very much are.
Liverpool was also looked at, with a possible configuration around the legendary Albert Dock explored. But nothing formal or serious was ever developed.
Can FE get a bumper crowd?
Brands Hatch was the most viable home for Formula E.
It ticks a lot of boxes, such as close proximity to large conurbations, a challenging track and also somewhere that has access to a lot of fan data that can be excavated to ensure a big crowd at the end of May, 2027.
What it isn’t is a Grade 1 international circuit, like Silverstone. Brands Hatch has FIA grade two status, the criteria of which centre upon strict technical and infrastructural baselines, which scale down slightly from the absolute maximum requirements of a Formula One event.
Brands Hatch has hosted big powerful single seaters regularly over the last 20 years from A1 GP, Superleague Formula and Historic F1 races. It has a reputation as a drivers track and crucially for Formula E, one also that is fan friendly due to its natural amphitheatre bowl that takes in half of the Grand Prix track from Clearways corner all the way around to the Surtees lefthander.
Formula E CEO, Jeff Dodds, is confident that will contribute to a large, guaranteed crowd for the first race, which could be named the ‘London EPrix hosted at Brands Hatch’.
“We have a database of one and a half million fans that we talk to directly,” said Dodds.
“One thing is we’re pretty good at promoting and marketing, so we’ve got that, but also MSV has got a database that’s been built over decades with people that they are actively going to work with to get people to the race,
“So, we would expect to have a really good showing. We also will look at an event format for that weekend as it’s Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, that creates a lot of excitement and provides a lot of entertainment to ensure that we get people there, and we showed my really good time.
“I think it’s a combination of putting on an event that people will get excited by using MSVs and our own marketing power to make sure that we fill the grandstands.”
