After the now legendary Paris dinner (yes, tes the napkin,etc!) and the awarding of the licensing to Formula E Holdings Ltd, a monumental amount of work had to be carried out in 2012 and 2013 to formulate several key pillars and foundations for Formula E to stand any chance of functioning.
Initially the plans drawn up from a sporting perspective amounted to what was almost an open rulebook with the only main proviso being a 300kg battery.
However, a new series road-map was being developed largely by the FIA and it soon became apparent that a less ambitious and more ‘spec’ concept would be employed.
Crucial to this was Professor Burkhard Goeschel (pictured below), President of the FIA’s Electric and New Energy Championship Commission (ENECC), who largely devised and then maintained the technical road map.
It soon became clear that the prospect of orchestrating a ‘run what you brung’ style series was neither going to be feasible or sustainable. Part and parcel of managing growths of motorsport series had to be making them economically viable and previous series such as the International Touring Car Championship (ITC) in the 1990s and the A1 GP Series (2005-09) attested to this.
Among the original frameworks considered was having three-heat format events, with drivers making pitstops to change their cars.
A brace of 25 minutes races with a final 10-minute sprint was mooted but eventually discounted. Instead an event set to the racing tradition of a set amount of laps would be employed but the ‘pitstop car-swap’ was kept. This became the biggest shock to racing ‘purists’ and traditionalists. But it could have been even more shocking for them.
At one stage at a long committee meeting at the end of 2013, Agag an Longo proffered the idea of drivers running a certain distance from one car to the next, Le Mans style but instead of across the track they had a greater distance in mind.
‘The basic idea was why don’t we put one of their cars 500 metres away and then we make the drivers run from one place to the other,’ remembers Longo. ‘But then we decided this is not motorsport and the other guy who is fitter could gain eight seconds or so compared to another one.’
Legend has it that Agag and Longo even thought about targeting Adidas and Nike for deals to incorporate in to the plan. ‘Believe me there are even some presentations on this,’ smiles Longo.
With the racing structure mostly formed the emphasis at the end of 2012 and early 2013 was then on sourcing and providing the racing hardware. FEH set to work quickly and a flurry of key partner contracts were signed.
In November 2012 the McLaren organisation, through what was then known as its Electronic Systems division, later to became McLaren Applied Technologies, agreed to supply the electronics, gearbox and motors for the first Formula E car which would come under the umbrella management of a newly created company called Spark Racing Technology (SRT).
SRT was formed after a meeting between Frederic Vasseur, the boss of multiple title winning junior single-seater team ART Grand Prix, Alejandro Agag and FIA President Jean Todt at the Bahrain Grand Prix in April 2012.
The trio hatched a plan for the new company to be the design engineering, development and track support arm of Formula E and to supply all 40 Spark-Renault SRT_01E single-seater race cars.
A few months later the deal was done and so began one of the most intense periods of making Formula E come to life.
SRT utilised the skills of Dallara, the most prolific and successful maker of racing cars over the last 20 years. The Italian company, with close input from SRT engineers which included former ART technicians Theophile Gouzain and Pierre-Alain Michot, ensured that the prototype SRT_01E was homologated in the summer of 2013 and subsequently the FIA granted the company sole authority to be the single-make supplier of the first generation of Formula E cars.
From the ART GP base which was a temporary home, the SRT engineers worked flat-out to produce 40 race cars and initially two spare/development vehicles for supply to Formula E and the prospective teams by 18 May 2014.
More major boosts came in March and May of 2013 respectively when Michelin was secured as a supplier of tyres and Renault came on board as the first auto manufacturer to take a direct interest in Formula E.
It was a significant announcement as Renault would be ingrained in the all-electric series via its inclusion in the official designation of the car which would be known as a Spark-Renault SRT_01E as well as the performance optimisation, systems integration and powertrain electrical safety elements.
While the sporting elements took shape quickly with the contracting of SRT, another technical structure had suffered trouble early. The sourcing and production of the batteries hit a major hurdle when an original agreement for Nissan to be the supplier crashed as it withdrew its initial agreement to supply the vital RESS capability.
At what was a relatively late stage Formula E Holding’s faced a major issue to find a quick replacement with the necessary expertise. But it did in the shape of Williams Advanced Engineering but the compromise was that the technology leading affiliate of the famous F1 team would have to work on an architecture already confirmed.
Despite this set-back, the still as yet to be crash-tested SRT_01E Formula E car was officially launched at the Frankfurt Motor Show on 10 September 2013 just before an exhaustive test and development programme began.
