London Excel was supposed to host its first Formula E race in the summer of 2020. That clearly could not happen due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, and even a year on it was hugely compromised by the remnants of that devastating global event.
In the summer of 2021 plans though were being completed to host the penultimate event of the 2020-21 campaign amid stringent medical testing a logistical complexity.
“My partner in crime on the Formula E project has been Tom Edwards, who picked up the operational and development side of this relationship with Formula E Operations from an Excel point of view right from the beginning,” explained Excel’s Director of Immersive Entertainment and Events, Damian Norman.
Edwards was instrumental in solving several tricky challenges including actually raising the roof of one hall to allow some elements of the London EPrix track build.
But it was the unexpected challenge of the pandemic that really is an intrinsic narrative to the birth of the London EPrix event at Excel that fascinates.
It is easy to forget now what the Excel looked like just a few months before when the temporary field hospital, the NHS Nightingale Hospital was set up at the Excel to treat patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Opened on April 3, 2020, after being built in just nine days, the facility was officially closed in April 2021. It held up to 4,000 beds across roughly 80 wards with ventilator and oxygen capabilities.
North and his teams worked wonders just to get the EPrix site built up and ready for track overlay work in July 2021. It was a pivotal time.
“There’s one evening in particular where the Formula E team had been on the road all season and they’d been isolating in their hotel rooms, and they hadn’t been allowed to be together,” recalled Norman.
“We have a roof terrace by our hotel, the ‘A Loft’, and everyone was staying there. Everyone was shut away, but they were allowed to socialise outside, and only people within the closed groups.
“I remember them murdering ‘Sweet Caroline’ (by Neil Diamond) on karaoke at about two in the morning, just being so pleased to be doing the thing that they loved, and it was a real it was a real moment for us because it was the first race we hosted after being the Nightingale Hospital and being a vaccination centre.”
That felt special to Norman and his team, and thus a special bond between Formula E and the Excel was formed.
“Sport does that, doesn’t it,” adds Norman. “It brings people together, and I think because we maintain that friendship and that relationship through it all, it really humanised the people behind the sport and that is why we’ve always worked so well with them.”
The Perfect FE event venue?
Although it has only hosted three of its previous five EPrixs as a season finale. London Excel has always somehow felt like the natural pinnacle of drama for the all-electric world championship.
It is also a tremendously efficient venue too with excellent amenities and an efficient transportation infrastructure. Great for families it has probably been the venue that has helped grow Formula E the most, fanbase wise, from an international perspective at least.
Its roots of all that though are really in the corridors of No.10 Downing Street and stretch back to 2007. That was when then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling signed off plans to build the Elizabeth Line.
A high-capacity hybrid commuter and rapid transit railway line that runs across Greater London and into Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Essex, the Elizabeth line (named after HRH Queen Elizabeth II) opened in May 2022 connecting Reading and Heathrow Airport in the west to Abbey Wood and Shenfield in the east via central London tunnels and feeding the Customs House and Canary Wharf areas close to the London Excel hub.
“I think the Elizabeth Line is a game changer for London, but it was a real game changer for Excel,” reckons Norman.
“With a net zero world championship, being able to have everybody arrive at a station and then be in your grandstand seat within five minutes is a pretty unique thing.
“The way that the stadia works with the fan experience in the e-village, because of the sheer size of Excel, it’s quite a unique opportunity because it’s so compact.
“It’s quite a novel way to experience. But then when you put in the music stages and the entertainment, the e-village and it’s ready-made for Formula E.”
Norman is right, it was ready made for the fan experience. But for the drivers and teams there were and remain challenges, such was the compact nature of the track.
In Part 2 tomorrow we look at why Excel has produced so much drama and how the organisers have tackled the limited space to try and move with where Formula E is heading in the future with Gen4, and why a natural end to its tenure was inevitable.
