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The man who race engineered Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso is currently fiddling in the vicinity of my gentleman’s area. A lower quality gentleman’s area than he’s previously known, for sure, but as the Formula E is a single-seater, the safety procedure is necessarily top drawer. Which is a polite way of saying that I may never walk in a straight line again.
Will it be worth it? Well, we’re mighty excited by Formula E, the long anticipated all-electric race series, due to kick off in September in Beijing. It’s being touted as the future of motor racing, but as this year’s brave new F1 era continues to court controversy with its muted soundtrack and emphasis on efficiency, can we really learn to love a series that makes no real noise at all? Today, TG.com brings you a world exclusive first drive of the car, so we’ll be a step closer to answering that key question.
The signs are promising, not least because some of motorsport’s biggest guns are involved. Dallara has engineered the carbon/aluminium chassis, McLaren's electronics division is supplying the powertrain and control electronics, the 200kW batteries are from Williams F1’s advanced engineering department, and the sequential gearbox is from Hewland. Renault is tasked with safely integrating the whole lot, while Michelin has developed a new type of all-weather treaded tyre. Spark, a sister company to the ART GP2 and F3 outfit, has spent the past two years designing and developing the car. And the whole thing is presided over by Alejandro Agag, a former politician turned motorsport entrepreneur who has more fingers in pies than he actually has fingers and Ginsters have pies.
Formula E has set up camp in Donington which, while not exactly Silicon Valley, now has a dedicated cell bravely – and swiftly – carving out a significant new sporting era. The teams will all be based there, when they’re not zipping between some of the world’s most exciting cities to race on new street circuits. Including Punta del Este in Uruguay, whose national football side you may be vaguely aware of.
Earlier this week, too, former F1 driver Jarno Trulli confirmed that he’s bought his own team, and will line up in TrulliGP alongside other big names such as Bruno Senna, Jaime Alguersuari, Franck Montagny, and Karun Chandhok, driving for the likes of Andretti Autosport, Alain Prost, Virgin, and Audi Sport ABT. This is racing aimed at the so-called smartphone generation, and they’ll even be able to tweet extra energy to their favourite driver during a race.
Right now, however, the teams are just taking delivery of their chassis’, many of which are currently sitting in front of me in Formula E’s central hangar. Behind them sits the main development car, currently being pored over by a man from McLaren, two men from Williams, and Theo Gouzin from Spark, the guy who took the car from a white paper proposal to reality, and who has engineered Romain Grosjean, Adrian Sutil and some guy called Sebastian Vettel. To the right of them, a handful of battery packs are waiting for installation. They look huge, each weigh around 320kg, including their own cooling gubbins, and serve as an instant reminder that this really is frontier stuff.
‘The car is fully developed, so hopefully we will have no more headaches,’ Theo tells me. ‘But packaging the battery has been demanding. The Williams guys have a lot of experience in this area, with their own KERS and the work they did on the Jaguar CX-75. They pushed us on some of the areas, so there have been several iterations along the way. The goal of the championship is really to involve more people in this technology, to progress battery tech, make them lighter and more efficient.’
Written By:- Jason Barlow
More of this article on the Top gear website
