- Two-time champion Jean- Éric Vergne says Formula E isn’t the future – it’s now.
- Avalanche Andretti team leader Roger Griffiths says people need to be educated about electric race cars.
- For reigning champ Stoffel Vandoorne, the trick is to balance sustainability with entertainment.
The ABB FIA Formula E series, the single-seat motorsport for all-electric cars, is heading to Portland, Ore., June 24, and Jean-Éric Vergne, its first and only repeat champion, said it isn’t the future of auto racing.
“No, it’s not the future,” the driver for American-owned DS Penske said. "It’s the present. I could say it was the future 10 years ago when it started (was conceived), but today it's clearly the present.”
As Formula E nears races through its ninth season, the French former Formula 1 driver said he can’t predict if automobiles worldwide will be electrified and piston-driven engines will become dinosaurs. “But when you look at the direction of the big car manufacturers,” he said, “I feel you can get a glimpse of an idea of where the world is going.”
And where is Formula E, already with its better energy-efficient Gen 3 car, going? What does it want to be when it grows up?
Alberto Longo, co-founder of the series along with his Extreme E-propelling cousin Alejandro Agag, said, “We're only nine years old. We are way ahead of where we thought that we were going to be in nine years, in terms of audience, in terms of calendar, partners, manufacturers. But I think we're just showing the tip of the iceberg. We're just one percent there. The potential growth of the championship is limitless.”
Longo said he calculates that “success for us (would be) becoming the leader in sustainable motorsport, which at the moment I think we are. We need to keep on growing on the number of cities that we have. We need to keep on growing on the number of teams and manufacturers and that we have already. It’s becoming that tier-one sport that everybody will switch the (TV) channel to look for it.”
This season represents a critical juncture in preparing for the next decade and the next generation of race car to improve the current version of the Spark-Dallara that should be on track by 2027. Longo said the shapers of the championship want to make sure that all the steps they take move it forward and not sideways or backwards.
“That’s our daily task,” Longo said. “The goal is very clear, and setting up the base that would allow us to grow towards where we want. The direction was set long time ago, and we are on track. We are way better than what we thought. So it's really good. Also, we have fantastic partner shareholders that allow us to keep them investing in the product and not thinking on short term with a short-term vision. But they bought into the idea, and this is a 15- to 20-year project. It's not something that’s quick.”
Jamie Reigle, who gave way in mid-May to Jeff Dodds as CEO, said during the recent event at Monaco, “Most sports have been around for decades or more than a century. Most sports that we know were people getting together and competing with each other. We're unusual in that we were founded with the express purpose of using electric mobility by climate change and using the power of sport to inspire change. All the other sports in the world were organic, sports that came together and then became the commercial entities. So we're different in that regard.
“We’re only nine years old, so maybe we're not a baby, but we're an adolescent,” Reigle said. “We still have a long way to go to grow the audience, to grow the recognition. That's why it's important come to places like Monaco, because we're leaning into that history, borrowing from that history, and it gives us credibility. We show a different type of racing in a context that is so well-known to sports fans around the world.
“So I'll give you an example,” Reigle said. “When we did the full circuit of Monaco for the first time, there was a lot of discussion: ‘Well, the cars are going to be slow compared to Formula 1, the lap time where people are going to compare.’ And the reality is we had the race and we had six lead changes and the exact number 50 overtakes. So we showed you can have a really exciting motor sport and money. We can show a different version, and the two can co-exist.”
As for the larger purpose, or ambition, with electric vehicles, Reigle said as late as 2019, “there was a lot of debate” about production EVs and that even last year in Europe, “I think 15 percent of the cars sold are either electric or hybrid. So this is happening very, very fast. We have a huge acceleration. So that's why I think we're still just getting started.”
Roger Griffiths, team principal for American organization Avalanche Andretti, said Formula E might be the catalyst for proving the “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday” marketing theory. He said that has been the catch-phrase for many years, “and ‘We use racing to better our road cars.’ It’s a nice story, but I don’t know how real it was. But I think Formula E has certainly accelerated that progress. It's also made the general public much more aware of electric road cars—and not necessarily just slow, odd-looking things that are really only suited for city driving. These cars are capable of 250 kilometers an hour plus and set extremely capable lap times around racing circuits. We've got really strong racing.
“So I think we've dispelled some of the myths or misconceptions that people have had about electric cars. They can be fast, they can be fun, they can be sexy, whatever. So, I think we've done a good job in doing that,” Griffiths said. “And then obviously there's the overriding message that the championship's trying to send, which is about we need to be more sustainable about how we go racing, as well.”
Some skeptics cite safety when considering battery-powered cars, and Griffiths pooh-poohed that kind of talk: “Everybody can pull the safety card. That's the easiest trick in the book. But I think that that's just people that just really don't understand what we do and how much effort goes into making these cars safe. With the right protocols in place, Formula E or any other electric-racing championship is as safe as any other one. I think it's just people haven't been educated well enough on the potentials for an electric car.”
Avalanche Andretti’s Jake Dennis won the Mexico City season-opener and has seven podium finishes, and he’s one point behind Porsche’s standings leader Pascal Wehrlein coming to Portland, said, “The three years which I've been here, it’s grown so much, and the new cars came out this year. So it's progressed a lot, and I think over the next few years, especially when Gen 4 comes out, I think it's going to be another big step. I'm here for the long term, and I'm really excited to see where it goes.”
Vergne said this platform has “gained some proper momentum. We’re seeing this already with a new generation.” He said he saw that at the packed house in April at Berlin in Rounds 7 and 8 of 16. “I (met) people that came across France, England, with the electric cars, and I didn't see that in the past. And I can really see the hype starting to grow again around Formula E, with people loving electric vehicles. And I (saw) so many fans in Monaco in the streets, asking for pictures. ‘Where you come from?’ ‘Scotland’ . . . ‘I come from Italy’ . . . They're coming from a bit of everywhere in Europe, to come and watch the Formula E races. And I think that's a clear sign of the well-being of the championship and the direction it's going.
"I’d like to look one day at my racing career, thinking that I was at the beginning of something great, something big, something that changed the view of electric vehicles and changed in a way in the world. That would be nice. But I'm not really thinking about that now.”
But that makes him and DS Penske teammate Stoffel Vandoorne, the reigning series champion, pioneers, in a sense.
“I guess it does a little bit, for sure. I've had quite a bit of success in my career, and when you have a certain amount of success, you have a bit of a bigger voice, as well. So people take you a bit more serious. They listen to you a little bit more. That helps. And it's nice as well to be in a position like that,” Vandoorne said. “I want to help, and I think because this is still a young championship, drivers do have a bit of an influence. We give our feedback on how the races are going, what we think can improve to improve the show, because ultimately, this is entertainment, as well. So yeah, I think, you know, got to find the right balance. You got to know where you have the power and where you don't have the power, in the end.”
But Vandoorne has a racer’s perspective.
“It's great to be involved in the championship with this mission, but at the end of the day, I've been racing since I was a kid," Vandoorne said. "So my job is to drive cars fast, and that's what I'm kind of employed to do. So I would say I'm not that focused on where the sport is going exactly, because ultimately I'm not a decision-maker. I've got a lot of experience in the sport. I've been in a lot of different series, and it's always good to see the different things in different series, how they manage certain situations, how they manage championships, and especially Formula E, which is still a young championship.
“There's always room for improvement. I think we're on the right track where the cars are going. I think this year was obviously quite an interesting one with the new generation of cars, and I think there's been a huge amount learned how to make it a lot better for the next generation of cars, as well. So I think that's where the focus lies right now,” he said. “We've got these cars, but how do we make the next generation even better or powerful, faster, make it tech technologically interesting for the public, as well? And how do we approach our fans with that?”
It's a lot to ask of a nine-year-old, but Formula E is up to the task.
Susan Wade has lived in the Seattle area for 40 years, but motorsports is in the Indianapolis native’s DNA. She has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with nearly 30 seasons at the racetrack, focusing on the human-interest angle. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, and Seattle Times. She has contributed to Autoweek as a freelance writer since 2016.
