Relief for Formula E after first Gen 3 race, but can it convince sceptics?

Electric racing

Formula E's new Gen3 car has been plagued by reliability issues in testing, but its first race in Mexico was deemed a success with competitors dicing behind dominant Dennis

Jake Dennis Andretti Formula E driver celebrates at 2023 Mexico E-Prix

Gen3 debut was a relative cruise in the park for Dennis

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Motor sport is rarely simple, especially today. Take Formula E and the much-heralded Gen3 opener in Mexico City last Saturday.

Watching from a vantage point on the start/finish straight, the first race for the all-new generation of electric-powered single-seaters was a little underwhelming, despite including many of the elements we look for in exciting motor racing: a pass for the lead and win; a spirited battle for the podium that built nicely as the race progressed; even a change of position on the final lap. It all played out in front of a traditionally enthusiastic Mexican crowd that packed the main grandstands and the those of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez’s signature Foro Sol baseball stadium. They numbered 40,000, apparently, and that was easy to believe.

Yes, on that basis it was a good motor race. But… the three safety car interruptions for relatively minor incidents took ages to clear up. And the new cars… they are quick in a straight line and slide through the corners with plenty of tyre squeal. But at the start of season nine, Formula E remains an acquired taste, largely because of the lack of noise. As they streamed into the first turn each lap, the new Spark single-seaters whistled under braking like fireworks – just without the bang. It’s a strangely detached sensation watching them in the metal.

Lucas di Grassi Mahindra Formula E driver celebrates at 2023 Mexico E-Prix

Di Grassi was surprised by performance and reliability of car

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Brit Jake Dennis dominated the 58-minute race, stretched by those safety car interludes. He started second von the grid for Avalanche Andretti in his first weekend with Porsche power, but had the speed for pole position without the mistake he made in the final head-to-head duel. That handed the top spot to a surprised and delighted Lucas di Grassi, who only expected to “see if the car worked and was OK” on his first weekend driving for Mahindra.

But in the race the Brazilian had no answer for Dennis. After most of the first 10 laps had been neutralised, the Avalanche Andretti driver made a neat and decisive move at Turn 3 to take the lead and quickly built a gap. That was snuffed out by the third safety car, but once the race ran clean he ended up with a winning margin of nearly eight seconds, over Porsche works driver and the winner in Mexico last year Pascal Wehrlein, who came from sixth on the grid to finish a comfortable runner-up.

“This was a massive unknown for everyone, whereas in the Gen2 era you generally knew who had the quickest powertrain in the race,” said the delighted winner after making his bit of Gen3 history. “We had really strong pace, I got past Lucas and hit my targets, made sure there were no mistakes to bring it home. It was a relief to see the chequered flag and a big turnaround from Valencia [the pre-season tests held before Christmas] where I honestly thought we were one of the slowest.”

It hadn’t been underwhelming from where Dennis was sitting. “It was a great spectacle,” he insisted. “It showed you can overtake with these cars. Lucas defended really well but Pascal [Wehrlein] came from P6 to P2, and Mexico is not the easiest place to overtake. Overall I think it was a really good motor race: clean, close and we put on a really good show for the fans. It’s only going to get better. The cars will get quicker, and the teams will understand the systems more, which is the biggest thing on these cars.”

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Di Grassi too was upbeat, having held off a train of cars to cling on to his podium place, while André Lotterer – now Dennis’s team-mate at Andretti – demoted McLaren’s Jake Hughes on the final lap to make it three Porsche-powered cars in the top four. For Hughes, driving for the team that used to be the championship-winning Mercedes EQ operation, Mexico represented a promising start. He qualified and ran third early on, as McLaren chief Zak Brown watched from the pits. Looks like the papaya cars will be a factor in this series.

Back in the media centre, colleagues hadn’t really noticed the underwhelming sensation and pointed out correctly that the level of reliability had far exceeded the doomsday winter expectations. There were car failures, but Sam Bird’s suspected driveshaft trouble in the Jaguar was probably the sort of thing that can happen to a team at any time.

Along with McLaren, Maserati and Cupra have joined the fray this year to soften the blows of losing Mercedes, BMW and Audi in the past two years. McLaren had the best of it in Mexico, Maserati’s Edoardo Mortara causing the third safety car interlude when he spun at Turn 1 and backed it into the barrier with a whump we could hear from the start/finish.

The biggest concern was for Abt Cupra’s Robin Frijns, the former Envision Virgin bumping into the back of Norman Nato’s Nissan on the first lap and into retirement. The impact didn’t look that heavy, but it was one of those awkward ones where the driver got his hand caught in the steering wheel. Frijns suffered a nasty break that required surgery later that day and is now a doubt for the Diriyah double-header on the last weekend of the month.

4 Jake Dennis Andretti Formula E driver celebrates at 2023 Mexico E-Prix

Long periods under safety was a feature of Mexico race

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It was good to see Abt back after its season sabbatical in the wake of Audi’s withdrawal. The Cupra deal is merely sponsorship for now, but there are greater intentions for the Seat-affiliated brand to have a technical input in the future. A lack of track time was always going to make this a difficult weekend and the other team signing, ex-DTM racer Nico Muller, trailed home 14th from 18th on the grid.

“For us it was important to get as many laps as possible under our belts, finish the race and capture data,” Muller told us. “We’ve had very limited running, especially on my side of the garage in Valencia, so it was really important to come here and have a clean weekend. It would have been nice to have more performance. You want to be fighting for the top 10, but we just didn’t have the pace for that. There is a lot to look into, to analyse and understand. But as a first step it was all right.”

He also offered some useful insight into the new cars, which do sadly seem to have made overtaking more difficult. Usually in modern racing aerodynamics are the key factor defining performance, but here in this complicated and pioneering series it’s electronic software that counts the most. Muller explained why.

“These cars are extremely sensitive,” he said. “They have a lot of power to control, and the way you slow the cars down has changed a lot. You are using regen on the front as well now and the brake feeling is completely different. You have a lot more tools to play with on the software side: how you build up the negative torque, how you slow the car down, how you find the limit. The software plays a key role in all of that. The driver needs to build trust into the systems, otherwise it is very easy to be over the limit or slightly below. And the penalty for that in these cars is very big in terms of lap time.”

Naturally, everyone was talking up the spectacle. There’s a lot on the line for Formula E this year and these new cars simply must deliver for those manufacturers who have remained loyal, for those coming in and for those TV figures that are another thing that could be described as underwhelming. Well, the real ones, at any rate.

2 Jake Dennis Andretti Formula E driver celebrates at 2023 Mexico E-Prix

Dennis leads the way in front of impressive crowd

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“I think we can have a good season,” maintained Müller. “The races will be more intense and even quicker. Overtaking seems to be not easy, even on a track like this one which is energy sensitive where you have a high coasting percentage. We’ll have to see how that pans out. But I think the cars look exciting on track, they are much faster thanks to the extra power we have and for the whole show it is good. Also it is very easy to make mistakes, and obviously that causes drama.”

First time out with loads of new tech was always going to be tough. In that context, Mexico really was a success. Let’s wait and see how the new cars look and race on the more fiddly city street tracks the series has been founded on.

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