Formula E has one (and only one) very good thing going for it right now, the wheel-to-wheel racing is actually really exciting. If you don't believe me, watch this last lap crash between Nick Heidfeld and Nico Prost at the last lap of the race in Beijing. Yes, cars crash in all forms of racing (Pastor Maldonado has practically made an entire career out of it), but when's the last time you've seen a legitimate wheel-to-wheel battle for the lead on the last lap of a Formula 1 race. The crash in Beijing happened back in September, and I still remember it quite clearly, and I can't remember anything from the last Formula 1 race I watched, so Formula E has to be doing something right.
Okay, so the racing in Formula E is actually pretty good, but there is still a lot wrong with the series. For starters, there's fan boost. For those of you who don't know, the Formula E cars are equipped with a push-to-pass feature. So far so good. Even the almighty CART Champ Cars had push to pass. For Formula E "ePrixes" however, (these things really do need a better name), the driver who gets the most mentions on social media gets an extra use of his push to pass button. Let's take a step back and put this in perspective. The driver who is the most popular, effectively gets a more powerful car. That seams totally legitimate and in the spirit of competition. To be fair, from the racing I've seen, fan boost isn't exactly a push-to-win button, but it makes Formula E look about as legitimate as a South American military dictator.
Fortunately, fan boost is an amazingly simple problem to fix, you just get rid of it, but the Formula E cars have some technological problems that are going to be more difficult to fix. Chief among these problems is the limited battery storage. For a race that's only an hour long, each team needs two cars, because a Formula E pit stop doesn't mean four tires and fuel, it means getting in a new car. This effectively puts every team on the same basic pit strategy, and diminishes the racing product as a result. It also takes the fact that electric vehicle racing isn't truly ready for prime time yet, and places that fact front and center. Also, these cars are fragile. At Buenos Aires, a number of cars ended their races early with broken suspensions because the cars couldn't go over the curbing without self destructing. Think about this last sentence for a second. The race is only an hour long, and each team uses two cars in the race. This means that (neglecting qualifying and practice time), these cars are only capable of racing for 30 minutes before disintegrating. These things make the old Life W12 Formula 1 engine look positively bomb proof. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you owe it to yourself to read the story of Life Racing).
Assuming Formula E has ambitions of being a top tier racing series, and not just the dancing monkey to Formula 1's main attraction, they're going to need to run longer races, either in the form of two hour races (my preferred option), or double header weekends (think Pirelli World Challenge), and that means Formula E is going to need to figure out how to make traditional pit stops possible, and make sure the chassis is physically capable of running flat out for more then an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
And while we're talking about the technological limitations, let me throw some more cold water on Formula E. (Which is actually a really bad idea because you shouldn't throw water on electrical equipment). Formula E is not going to drive technological development for electric road cars. For the 2015/2016 Formula E season, there are eight car "manufacturers." Great, these guys will develop the technology to get a leg up in racing, and that technology will trickle down to road cars. There is only one little miscalculation in this line of thinking. Andretti Autosport isn't in the business of building road cars. Of the ten current Formula E teams, only two (Audi Sport ABT and E.Dams-Renault) have any connection to real car manufacturers. Yes, Andretti Autosport has racing relationships with Honda and Volkswagen, but do you really think Andretti engineers are calling Japan to give Honda electric vehicle tips? Plus, as I said earlier, the number one technical problem facing Formula E right now is the need to run two cars per driver in every race. Formula E is hoping to be at the point where they have one car per driver by season five. I'm not sure Formula E is going to be in existence for season five.
There's no doubt that Formula E is a flawed series in it's current incarnation, and I have doubts about it's long term viability, but in the mean time, there is some fun to be had.
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