The famous line “Youth is wasted on the young” is frequently attributed to Oscar Wilde, but it was actually said by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Wilde’s seminal ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ a tale essentially about youth and how it is often wasted, included the quote “If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.”
But youth is the new trend in Formula E right now and some teams are hoping it isn’t wasted. The average age of next seasons’ grid is set to be greatly reduced as the more mature talents of Sebastien Buemi, Norman Nato and Lucas di Grassi vacate the stage and fresh blood is introduced.
Zak O’Sullivan (21) is set to be one of those. He will race for Envision and join Theo Pourchaire (23) to make at least two rookies, at least one other, potentially Robert Shwartzman is expected to join them. With Zane Maloney (22) and Pepe Marti (21) already blazing a trail and embedded with teams, Formula E has a genuine youth movement on the march.
In fact, all of a sudden Formula E’s most recent race winner Taylor Barnard, at an ageing 22 years and three months feels like an elder statesman after competing in 36 EPrixs.
But what has triggered this trend?
It is quite simple, some teams, notably Envision, Opel and potentially Lola, have seen a perfect opportunity to blood new talent with the switch in rules sets that will see the nature of racing change next season.
The onus on clever pack racing will still count but to a much lesser degree. Raw pace and more traditional management of cars that will have traction control all over it, will be among the key attributes, as will understanding and manipulating the differentials at the front and rear, notably the front which will run off the FPK.
Initial indications from testing are that Maloney (tested Gen4 with Lola but about to experience the Nissan), Pourchaire (Stellantis) and O’Sullivan (Jaguar experience at Estoril recently) are getting to grips with the challenge super quickly.
“The car is incredibly exciting as a driver to drive it, but as an engineer, I think there’s going to be such a huge demand on their expertise to try and exploit all the little areas, find all the little details for advantages,” James Rossiter, the official Gen4 test driver told FEN earlier this year.
“With the opportunity to go into details with how the front powertrain operates, how it works, let’s say with the front differential, the way that will interact with how you turn, how you have the anti-lock braking and traction control, and all these different systems, they all weave their way together.
“I think as an engineer, it’s going to really open up a huge amount of development, a huge amount of innovation, and it gives a great possibility for all of the OEMs to have their engineers trained up to the highest level.”
A young James Rossiter, circa 2006 would have loved to be racing these Gen4 cars. His equivalents 20 years on will get a thrill. But more than that they can bring, in their first seasons at least, a great deal of value to teams because they are ambitious and hungry, but also they are relatively cheap too.
Let’s be blunt. A frugal spend on driver salaries, which sits outside of the cost cap, is a big attraction as well. There is risk but teams are increasingly willing to take that, meaning that us the fans, observers and neutrals have a whole new layer of talent to discover and enjoy.
