'The world's most demanding racing' — why Formula E deserves a chance on London return

From the intense drama of Silverstone and the British Grand Prix, attention switches this week to Formula E’s return to London for the first time since 2016 and a new E-Prix venue based in and out of the ExCel exhibition halls in the Docklands.

The novel track, partly featuring emissions and fumes-free indoor racing, should make for cool TV for Channel 4, which is showing both of the London races live this weekend. Just as well really. Spectators will be limited to small numbers mostly made up by key workers from the local area (excellent and worthy, of course), plus the odd fizz-sipping VIP. After the crowds returned under the UK government’s Events Research Programme at Goodwood and Silverstone, the next instalment of British motor sport’s big summer comeback feels a little like a missed opportunity, despite the good news on the terrestrial TV coverage.

Then again, if crowds were allowed back what kind of spectacle would they have witnessed? You never know what you’ll get with Formula E this year, its first as a bona fide FIA world championship. For every Monaco e-Prix, which was 10 times more entertaining than the Formula 1 grand prix at the Principality in May, there’s also the farce in Valencia when drivers found themselves excluded at the end for using too much energy – even though they hadn’t actually run out. The confusion was caused by a rule that subtracts a percentage of energy from each car for every safety car interruption, to keep sacrosanct Formula E’s ethos of managing what you’re given. But too many safety car periods in one afternoon caught the race director on the hop, on the day Formula E finally spread its wings from signature street tracks in which you can barely swing a Jaguar to a race on a proper, permanent circuit. The outcome was unfortunate, to put it mildly.

I must admit, Formula E lost me that day and I’ve been struggling to re-engage ever since. Now, I like to think of myself as progressive and absolutely open-minded to new technology. My experiences of EVs on the road have largely been positive too, so my doubts aren’t based on some stuck-in-the-past prejudice. But I profess I don’t understand why a series that exists to promote the merits of high-performance EV motoring bases its racing spectacle on range anxiety – the overriding factor that still puts off the wider public from buying plug-ins for the road (along with how expensive they are. And where you charge if you live on a terraced street. And where the lithium come from… But I digress).

The range anxiety premise has been bugging me since Valencia. So when I was invited recently to visit Mahindra Racing at its impressive base in Banbury, here was a chance to put that question to the one driver on the grid you can guarantee isn’t just talking up EV technology because he’s paid to. Alexander Sims really believes in going electric, because he was among the first to do so on the road nearly 10 years ago. He’s a true believer.

So here’s what he said when I challenged him that Formula E’s ethos on energy management motor sport is wrong – and not what racing and sports fans tune in for when they want to be entertained. “I do think it’s right,” he said slowly, before picking up his thread. “I totally understand where you are coming from with the question in terms of range anxiety and granted, Valencia was possibly the worst show Formula E could have put on, in terms of drivers running out of energy and being disqualified. We didn’t need that in season seven of Formula E, we should have been way past that.

“But instead of referencing range anxiety, we focus on efficiency. The thing about Formula E for me is that we design the races to be longer than we can go flat out for. If the race was 35 minutes instead of 45 or they gave us more battery capacity which they could do, we’d all be flat out. In my experience of Formula E racing in season five, when we didn’t have an energy reduction under safety cars, the second half of races did tend to go flat out when there had been a safety car – and they were boring as hell. There was no differentiation you can make as a driver.

“If there’s a gap you want to try and muscle through, but the walls are very close if it goes wrong”

“You might be able to get one or two tenths over the guy ahead of you, but if you are on a street track and two tenths over a lap equates to perhaps two hundredths on one straight, with that advantage you ain’t going to make an overtake. So by having the coasting and the regen on multiple corners per lap, it gives you the opportunity as the driver behind to decide ‘I’m going to spend more energy here and go for an overtake, and be aggressive to create an opportunity’. I guess it’s what F1 races would be like without DRS. F1 races would be pretty dull without it. See how dull it is at Monaco even with DRS.”

Sims is, of course, absolutely right: the best motor racing is made from differentiation, when a driver can access an edge to catch and pass the rival in front. Still, I’m struggling with Alexander’s assertion of selling Formula E on the remarkable efficiency of its ground-breaking technology. Efficiency to lure more eyeballs? Hmm. But you only had to watch the F1 sprint race at Silverstone on Saturday to see his point about simple flat-out racing. It sounds good, but it doesn’t work. That some chose the soft Pirellis over the mediums for the 17-lap blast meant the likes of Fernando Alonso could put on a stunning first lap, then struggle to maintain the position he had gained as the rubber began to grain. If they’d all chosen mediums, the stalemate that existed at the front between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton might have been the only story.