Ten of the 11 teams have a revised driver line-up, the entry list features a handful of different names, while the Gen2 cars have been put out to pasture and replaced with the jet-fighter-inspired Gen3 machinery. Plus, for those critical of the championship and what it comes to represent, Fanboost has been officially killed off. The perception of a popularity contest is no longer there, even though the five-second power boost made scant difference…
Ahead of the season opener, the teams had the chance to unbox their new cars (presumably all the trimmings attached to a plastic frame like a Tamiya model kit) and plonk their upscaled powertrains inside. There are two on each car this year, although only one is used for propulsion; the drive motor has been upscaled from 250 to 350kW, while the front-mounted 250kW single-spec motor will be used for energy regeneration only. That’s 600kW of total regen, and Formula E is particularly proud of the statistics: 40% of the energy used during a race will come from harvesting, up from around 25% in the old-spec car.
That means that the new Williams Advanced Engineering-designed battery can be smaller than the old 52kWh package produced by McLaren/Atieva, resulting a lighter car. Hankook has taken over from Michelin as tyre supplier, so the teams won’t even have a baseline to work from going into the new season. Those uncharted waters must be rapidly mapped out.
On paper, these elements could produce a truly brilliant season. The unpredictability of the new rules, the tweaks to the sporting format, and each team finding key veins of performance at different times could yield a back-and-forth battle for supremacy. That will shape the title fights and the on-track battles; if the spectacle with the new car can deliver on its promises, then the championship’s stagnating viewing figures could enjoy a massive upswing.
But it’s important to note the teething problems ahead of the season. The deliveries of common parts were late, causing manufacturers to cancel tests. The new battery also had a fraught development and required a packaging rethink as overheating and derating proved a common theme. With limited running, some teams have also suffered with brake-by-wire problems, with Formula E taking the brave decision to remove the rear brakes and hand the motor the remit of providing the stopping power.
These are genuine concerns among the teams, and there have been heavy crashes due to the latter; Sam Bird had a crash during Jaguar’s private testing programme at Calafat, while Sebastien Buemi shunted his Envision Jaguar during the Valencia collective test.
At the same time, this is what testing is for; engineers speak of needing to ‘break the car’ to ensure all creases are ironed out ahead of the season proper. If any of these issues continue in Mexico City, then it could be cause for the teams and drivers to hit panic stations, but we’re yet to cross that bridge. An emergency brake is in the pipeline, but won’t be ready for the opening rounds.
Outside of the bubble, reaction to the championship’s aesthetic overhaul has been… mixed, to say the least. The graphics themselves, aligned with a new typeface, are very contemporary affairs, but the new logo has split opinion. To this writer’s mind, it’s reminiscent of an early-2000s rural Spanish holiday lettings brand. People will simply get used to it – remember the uproar over Formula 1’s rebrand for 2018?
And what of the car? It’s something else that the most vocal will come to accept; although it looks worryingly like a casket from a plan view, it looks lively out on the circuit as the drivers attempt to tame it. Thankfully, the teams have done wonderful jobs with the liveries – and have strayed away from the dark background, light blue accents that had proliferated in recent years. The skittishness of the new cars comes from the new Hankook boots, which are harder and more durable than the Michelin offerings from seasons prior. Grip is at a real premium, which the drivers will surely air grievances about.
The first glimpse of the cars all running together was offered in Valencia’s December test. It’s a fool’s errand to try to derive any pecking order from one collective test, given each team is at different stages in their understanding of the Gen3 package, but patterns nonetheless emerged in the timing screens.
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New Maserati MSG recruit Maximilian Guenther headed five of the seven timed sessions and ended the test with the fastest time, joined by the DS Penskes in the overall top three. The two Stellantis marques share common hardware and, while it would suggest that either the ex-Dragon team or the ex-Venturi squad enter Mexico as favourites, it’s feasible that another manufacturer could have found another step in development.
As Jaguar technical chief Phil Charles explains: “It will keep evolving. I’m confident that everybody’s on a really steep learning curve, and certainly nowhere near to a stabilised condition. It’s going to be interesting. That’s going to make the championship ebb and flow a lot.”
The new generation offers lots of potential for Formula E to capitalise, but it’s up to the championship to tap into that. The on-track product should be even better than before, with the new cars looking like they’ll punish mistakes but reward well-calculated risks for the teams and drivers. Reliability just needs to remain strong; the championship could do without any repeats of the issues in testing to set the Gen3 era off to the best possible start.
1. Will 2023 be Evans’s year?
Two near-misses in as many years – will 2023 be third time lucky for Mitch Evans? The irrepressible Kiwi has evolved into one of Formula E’s leading lights in recent seasons, and was a candidate for titles across the past two campaigns.
Both ended in heartbreak. The 2021 finale in Berlin began with Evans unable to pull away from the grid, collecting fellow title contender Edoardo Mortara in the process to kill off his chances. Another electronics glitch a year later in London left Evans with too much to do in the Seoul finale, despite taking the title to the final race with a win at the Olympic Complex on the Saturday.
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In the case of that Seoul win, he underlined the determination he carries into every race. Lesser drivers would have failed to shrug off the disappointment of that London retirement, but Evans refused to wilt. That drive around the site of the 1988 Olympics set a high bar for his competitors to follow, the only blot on his copybook being a slight lock-up a few laps from home. You can bet that Evans will carry that form into 2023, although he admits the new cars require a complete reset in approach.
“In general, I was really proud,” he says of 2022. “And you want to carry that momentum and that confidence into the season. But it’s such a massive reset; mentally, you come in with good spirits and high hopes, and you think, ‘Now it’s that time to go one better’. But on the other hand, you’ve got to be a little bit realistic. There’s not many things we can take from Gen2 into Gen3.”
Much of it depends on how Jaguar can hit the ground running. If the I-Type 6 proves to be a frontguard staple, then Evans will undoubtedly become one of the favourites – but if team-mate Sam Bird proves rejuvenated under the new ruleset, the Aucklander won’t have it all his own way. Such is the nature of the Formula E field, however, that you could say that about anybody…
2. Old faces line up at new teams
After winning two teams’ titles and two drivers’ crowns, Mercedes has left the building, but the team remains in Formula E under its new McLaren guise. Team principal Ian James wanted to keep the band together despite the Silver Arrows’ withdrawal, and Mercedes motorsport CEO Toto Wolff saw the sense in selling off the squad as a going concern. For its part, McLaren wanted to expand its electric racing portfolio alongside its Extreme E team, and secured backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund to do so.
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The squad has since moved out of the Mercedes powertrains base in Brixworth and takes up residence at Bicester Heritage. It also becomes a customer team, linking up with Nissan for the foreseeable future as the Japanese marque hopes for a revival in fortunes after a lean couple of seasons. Testing, despite a few early bumps in the Source: Autosport