E By Gum

The FIA Formula e championship kicked off this morning in Beijing.

It was on ITV4 so I watched it.  If it hadn't been on a Freeview channel I wouldn't have been that fussed but I'm glad I did - I have high hopes for it.

 

For those of you who don't know about Formula e, read this excellent piece on the subject.

 

Actually, don't.  That was written ages ago before anyone knew what it would evolve into - you'd do better checking out their official website.

 

Formula e is the all-electric alternative to Formula 1 - and based on the first race, could be more exciting than Formula 1.  I was wary that using street circuits as they do and having same-spec cars would mean overtaking was going to be difficult but the fact that they have to control the power in order to conserve battery-charge did lead to some very entertaining overtaking.

 

Swapping cars half-way through the race because the batteries wouldn't last is a bit strange and I'm sure that will die out once battery technology improves.

 

We also have the new innovation of "Fan Boost" (or #FanBoost if you're into Twitter) whereby fans vote for their favourite drivers and the top three vote-receivers get a power boost that they can use once in the race - but more about that shortly.

 

So...let's meet the teams...

 

First the ITV4 team who will be presenting the Season to us - 85.7% of whom I had not heard of before.

 

Firstly, we have Jennie Gow (who doesn't seem to be any relation to BTCC boss Alan Gow) but who does seem to be knowledgeable (and genuinely excited) about motorsport and seemed to ask the right questions.  Jennie is the main presenter based in the studio with race engineer Kyle Wilson-Clarke and F3 Driver Jann Mardenborough.  It was quite refeshing and interesting to have a race engineer in there with a different take on things.  Jann seemed a bit nervous and a bit young:

In fact, he even looks younger than Leonardo diCaprio if that is possible.  I'm sure his confidence will build up as the series goes on.

 

Former F1 mechanic Marc Priestley joined roving reporter Nicki Shields provided trackside insight with Jack Nicholls and Dario Franchitti doing the commentary.  Dario Franchitti being the 14.3% of the team that I was familiar with.

 

Now the actual teams.  There are a few familiar names from motorsport in there: Virgin, Renault, Senna, Prost, Piquet and Andretti to name but six.  Ten teams in total, running cars that look like this: 

• British based Amlin Aguri is led by Japanese ex-Formula 1 driver Suzuki Aguri who also founded F1 team Super Aguri.
• Andretti Autosport is led by Michael Andretti (part of the American Andretti motorsport dynasty).
• Audi Sport ABT is the team behind Audi's DTM cars.
• China Racing - not to be confused with...
• Dragon Racing who are from California.
• E.Dams Renault are sponsored by a Dutch Cheese Manufacturer. (No they aren't)
• Mahindra Racing - from the Indian motoring concern responsible for some Jeep look-a-likes that got imported to the UK.
• Trulli GP led by ex F1 racer Jarno Trulli.
• Venturi Grand Prix a joint effort between Venturi an American car company who have experience in electric vehicles and Leonardo diCaprio (serious electric car advocate) who has experience in looking very young.  He wasn't seen once during the coverage - I hope he was actually there.

• Finally (for alphabetic reasons) we have Virgin Racing - Richard Branson has moved over from F1. 

In terms of drivers, Alain Prost has employed his son Nico:

That is actually a picture of Alain but with their helmets on, the likeness is uncanny.

Amlin Aguri have one of the two female drivers in the series, Katherine Legge who also happens to be a Brit.

Mahindra have the charismatic ex-F1 duo of Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna.

 

 Jarno Trulli is driving his own car whilst giving his other seat up to Italian Michela Cerruti.

 The other Brit in the series is Sam Bird driving for Virgin.

We also have several other ex-F1 stars (or their sons) in there too.

 

I think the fan boost may be a waste of time though with most people voting for the team with the best PR (Mahindra) or for the ladies (women voting for women and men voting for people they fancy) or for the countries with the biggest populations for for their own (Brazil, USA)

 

As it happened Mahindra's Senna, Brazil's di Grassi & Katherine Legge got the fan boosts.

 

We never got to find out when the boosts were used in the race.  I reckon a better system would be to have the vote during the race to potentially nobble someone or to help someone challenging for the lead.

 

The race itself felt a lot shorter than most motorsport I watch - but that was quite good - all done and dusted within three hours of TV.  Some excitement, some overtaking, some crashes, and, most importantly, a very dramatic finish with Nico Prost, who has led from the start, about to be overtaken by Nick Heidfeld on the last corner so cutting across and taking him out in a spectacular crash and taking himself out in the process allowing di Grassi to take the win.

 

As is traditional in motorsport, both blamed the other.

 

Prost was wrong.

 

So will I be watching the next race on November 22nd?

 

By gum I will.

Rallying Support

The World Rally Championship comes back to Wales tomorrow - but you'd be excused for missing it - where is all the TV coverage of what used to be a really big event?
For us in the UK, there will be, as has been for the rest of the Season, a fairly decent highlights/summary show on Dave after the event. But, if you want to catch more up-to-date (including some live) coverage, you'll need to tune in to the Welsh-language broadcaster S4/C. This is OK if you've got the right satellite or cable package, but for those of us without the urge to pay for such services, you need to be lucky enough to live in Wales or, like me, near enough to the border to pick up this channel.

Is rallying now so unpopular in Britain that none of the major broadcasters have any real interest? Has it really gone the same way as Showjumping and Rallying's sister sport Rallycross? I remember well as a child every Christmas watching "The Horse of the Year Show" on BBC1 from Olympia with Harvey Smith and David Broome and Alvin Schockemohle all trying to jump over "The Wall". I also remember Rallycross on a Saturday afternoon on Grandstand with lots of Minis, Escorts and Porsche 911s with plastic windscreens with little holes cut in them so that the drivers could still see when they were covered with mud. Rallycross still happens, check out their website - it just doesn't get the exposure.

The WRC has just about everything the other branches of motorsport has including pretty girls and a dominant champion in Sébastien Loeb. In fact, Sébastien's achievements are pretty remarkable - he has already claimed the WRC Driver's Championship this year and this is something he's now achieved for the seventh consecutive season. Incidentally, here's a quiz question based on a fact I learnt today: What has Sébastien Loeb got in common with Gabby Logan? Answer:They both used to be gymnasts. Maybe he should trail a pretty ribbon from his car? Then again, maybe not.

What the WRC doesn't have, though, is a Bernie Ecclestone/Alan Gow character in charge - I don't even know who is in charge of the WRC. Everyone knows who Bernie is - and what he continues to achieve as a grumpy 107 year-old (I may have his age slighty wrong there) is amazing. A younger, more Australian version of Bernie is Alan Gow who has just signed a new contract to keep him in place for three more years. Alan has steered the BTCC through difficult times and continues to see it thrive - including TV deals with ITV4 and introducing new rules to make it cheaper to compete.

Which brings us back, yet again, to Rallying. Whoever is in charge has done similar things to the car specifications/regulations and already attracted a third manufacturer in Mini (Sorry that should be MINI!) which will make a nice change from the leader-boards always reading Citroën, Citroën, Citroën, Ford, Ford, Citroën after each race. Now we need to sort out some TV deals - in the UK at least. Some big foreign stations already seem to be on board: TF1 in France, RTL in Germany, Network Ten in Oz.

So where are BBC Sport and ITV4? Channel 4 and five both did excellent work with cricket coverage in the past - let's have some mainstream channel showing live Rallying please.