Will Formula E be a success or a failure?

Formula E

Will 2014 be the landmark year in the history of motorsports? In September 2014, ten teams will be participating in the first ever all-electric motor race. Will anyone be interested in the race, considering the electric cars will be much slower than the Formula One cars?

With ten teams having identical cars and limited speed, FIA will have to spice up the event and the rules to make it more exciting and gather larger audience.

Electric cars cannot compete in long hour races with their limited battery charge, so they will have to make more pit stops. FIA, for safety concerns, will make the teams change their entire car rather than only the battery at the pit stop. All the teams will use the same car and power system for the race.

Each driver will have two cars unlike Formula One. The attraction that electric motors have is that they will be much quicker at the start, with high decibel levels. But Formula One cars can beat the Formula E cars hands down at top speeds. Formula E cars can notch up to 225 kph, whereas Formula One cars clock more than 300 kph. Formula E would also allow the spectators to interact with cars using social media.

The performance and the market of the electric cars will gain a boost with next year’s event. With all the teams going green, that would only mean more sponsorship. Big guns like Qualcomm, Michelin and DHL have shown a lot of interest and support for Formula E. If all goes well, very soon Formula One teams like Ferrari and Red Bull might participate and race for Formula E.

Formula E cars will not generate a great interest among Formula One fans who love the roar of a powerful engine. The fast racing cars of Formula One will remain much more interesting than the newer version. Slower races will not create the same excitement. At a time when teams in Formula One are clocking world record timings for pit stops, changing cars at every pit stop would slow down the race even more and will make it all the more boring.

During the 2013 Malaysian Grand Prix, the Red Bull team broke the world record timing for pit stop, in just 2.05 seconds. Formula E teams will need a lot of technology to ever crack that time, which will not happen any time soon. Formula E series, which will have 10 teams and 20 drivers, cannot emulate the performance of a Formula One teams and the well-established names they posses.

“I think those sort of things are lawn-mowers. I am not very supportive of this,” said Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One Boss. And he also insisted that considering Formula E as competition would be “stupid”. The key concern however, would be on the continuance of Formula E.

“Being involved in my previous life in many different racing series, I didn’t see many of them surviving, so let’s wait and see,” said Lotus F1 Team Principal Éric Boullier.

“We don’t compare ourselves to F1. We are not the electric F1,” as Luca Montezzemolo said recently; “we are Formula E, which is a completely different concept”, he added.

Though it is a different concept altogether, it is neither going to match the level of standard of Formula One nor is it going to earn a similar fan base.

With 11 races in a year, the Go-Green teams have to come up with technological advancements, better motors and longer battery charge to really pose a challenge to the petrol-pumped engines in Formula One. Moreover, the percolation of Formula E to a larger audience would be much tougher for FIA with the present fan craze for the high-speed Formula One cars. The new Formula E can never replace the long existing Formula 1.