Part 1
Beijing could hardly have provided a more dramatic conclusion to the build-up of Formula E on a weekend that those who were present will never forget.
The pressure and intensity of the first race was acute. Multiple issues in pre-season testing had seen a host of stoppages for a variety of technical issues. There had also been an early crash test when Karun Chandhok was broadsided by a wayward Sebastien Buemi in of all places the pitlane.
A test race had been held with Buemi emerging ‘victorious’. Operationally ‘a thousand lessons” were learned according to Alberto Longo, who along with Agag, attended the crucial and nerve jangling tests.
An uneasy and as it turned out unfounded feeling started to permeate that the series wasn’t quite ready for the first race. While the doubters licked their lips and willed schadenfreude Formula E Operations were facing a race against time to get the Beijing event ready for action.
Team owner Steven Lu’s local organisers were responsible for some operational elements of the race and several frank meetings were held in smoke-filled rooms on the site of what would become the first ever all-electric FIA sanctioned motor race.
The situation became increasingly serious, so much so that Alberto Longo himself joined operational staff to knuckle down on the eve of the race to lead a hand on an impromptu ‘earthing project’!
Remarkably, some officials wrongly believed that the perimeter fences could become ‘live’ if they came in to contact with the SRT_01E cars battery.
‘I start shaking just to think about it as there was a lot of pressure with around one hundred worldwide FIA officials to judge if it was a success or failure,’ recalls Longo.
‘I remember the night before the event, we were supposed to do on Friday a shakedown and the shakedown was done without some barriers already as there were some fences that we didn’t have time to put up.
‘The walls were all there but some of the fences we didn’t have time to install, so I remember that night, which is literally just seven hours before the first free practice, lifting some fences and putting them on top of the concrete walls. The whole team was there until three or four in the morning!’ Saturday 13 September proved to be an historic day as the field departed the grid.
There was no doomsday scenario of multiple technical issues, as watching on was the man who three years earlier had ad-libbed ideas on to that now famed restaurant napkin.
