No matter the intention behind a racing series, even if like
Formula e it’s for the good of green technology, it’ll only survive on how good
the racing is. And what a debut for these new all electric cars in; close
racing throughout, spectacular last lap battle for the lead resulting in an
unexpected winner. You can’t get a much better series open than that on the
street track around the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing, China.
Nicolas Prost provided the series with an instant dash of controversy.
He’d been leading from pole position for the entire race, through the car
changes he had even extended his lead up to three seconds after being run very
closely by Lucas di Grassi during the first half of the race.
Nick Heidfeld made major gains coming up from 5th
on the grid to 4th at the start before jumping to second during the
change of car. The three second gap to Prost gradually began to come down,
before with just 5 laps left he ate into the lead, taking chunks of time every
before being right on the Frenchman’s tail with just two laps left.
Heidfeld obviously had more power left in his batteries and
he was using it brilliantly, knowing exactly when to attack. On the final
straight approaching the last corner of the last lap he pulled out of the
slipstream and was on the inside when Prost inexplicably just barged straight
into him sending him sideways and over a raised kerb which sent Heidfeld’s
Venturi car into the air and almost head first into the catch fencing. It was a
violent crash but he was thankfully unharmed.
Prost suspension was done and he too couldn’t make the final
turn. It all left Lucas di Grassi in the lead to take the inaugural Formula e victory
for Audi Sport Abt in a quite thrilling race. Afterwards Heidfeld remonstrated
with Prost but amazingly Prost tried to blame Heidfeld. Take a look at the
video below and decide who was at fault.
Behind di Grassi was Andretti Formula E’s Franck Montagny
who is an exciting driver to watch. He made an aggressive move at the start
that nearly put his team mate Charles Pic into the wall and then charged after
several drivers all the while managing to conserve his battery power well. I
think he’s going to be a winner in this series sooner rather than later.
On the road di Grassi’s team mate Daniel Abt was third but
was dropped to tenth after he’d exceeded the amount of electrical usage
allowed. This promoted the only British driver Sam Bird to third after starting
12th and made some decent moves. Pic took fourth, with Karun
Chandhok fifth after suffering battery problems which lost him 19 seconds and
two places in the last two laps. A strong weekend for Chandhok.
Then came the Dragon Racing pair of Jerome d’Ambrosio and
Oriol Servia, ahead of Nelson Piquet in eight who always seemed to be involved
in some wheel to wheel action, while Stephane Sarrazin and Abt claimed the
final points positions.
The Trulli cars had problems too, with Jarno Trulli not even
getting off the grid. Jaime Alguersuari of Virgin Racing looked to be running strongly
at first but fell back and pre-season favourite Sebastien Buemi failed to
deliver after crashing twice in practice for e.dams. He had been fastest in
testing but the weekend fell apart for him, and it got worse when his rear wing
failed during the race.
Formula e put on a good first show. The cars actually looked
pretty spectacular through the corners, sliding all over the place although
this was countered slightly by looking a bit slow down the longer straights.
Still, the initial acceleration looked impressive.
When I say the racing was close, I mean literally, the
aerodynamics of the cars seemed to allow them to stay tucked up behind the rear
wing of the car in front fairly easily. The differing usage of the battery
power meant that drivers were conserving their energy at different times which
therefore meant that they were defending and attacking alternately depending on
their situation which kept the racing interesting.
The car changes actually allowed the order to get mixed up a
little half way through the race, although I did think it looked a little messy
and it did break up a good fight for the lead but that all came back together
by the end.
The television coverage was interesting, playing music
during safety car periods and the car changes made it seem like a video game
although I’m not sure that’ll be to everyone’s tastes. The direction was good,
focusing on battles throughout the field. Obviously there is still room for
improvement, I didn’t notice captions telling the audience that there were
drivers being investigated for various incidents and it took a little too long
to hear a reason for Abt’s penalty. I found it a bit disconcerting that over 25
laps of a track barely over 2 miles just how fast the energy levels fell, but
it’s a new sport and the technology will develop.
Overall it was an exciting and thrilling race, there’s
problems that need to be ironed out but it was a great start for this all
electric race series and I think many will be looking forward to the next race
in Malaysia which is sadly over two months away. But this has the makings of a
brilliant championship.
all photos taken from autosport.com
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