Formula E, Race at Home, and Degrees of Normal

Life, eh? Who’d have thought how 2020 would turn out?

It seemed so different only just over two months ago. Antonio Felix da Costa had taken his first win of the season, his first for DS Techeetah, and though everyone watching and taking part in the Marrakesh E-Prix had a vague sense of foreboding - a knot in the stomach - holding the race was such a great diversion that we were able to trick our minds into believing everything was okay.

World events happen while we’re busy making plans. Not directly comparable, but spectators at the Belgrade Grand Prix on 3 September 1939 presumably knew that all too well. The street race, won by Tazio Nuvolari in the final victory of his career, was staged in spite of the Second World War starting two days previously. It’s likely that nobody reading this was around at the time, and so, again, although not directly comparable with World War Two in any way, this gradual pulling-down of the curtain on normal life, has felt unprecedented.

We all had so many plans. Though politicians and race organisers in other forms of motorsport try to talk a good game about reopening and seeing light at the end of the tunnel, the bare fact is, lives are being lost, and sport, like any form of entertainment, starts to look like a luxury from that perspective.

Marrakesh, the last real-world outing for Formula E, was a taste of what we hoped was to come, with the first stirrings of a major rivalry. Jean-Eric Vergne was taken ill on the Thursday of the race meeting, and tested for the coronavirus, though thankfully it was found to just be a nasty bout of ‘flu he had. DS Techeetah had not expected a snotty and hoarse Vergne to be able to do as well as he did, but in holding off Max Günther for long enough to allow da Costa to win the race, he showed what a tag-team he and his team-mate can be when they work together.

That final airing - for now - for the Formula E cars could be a sign of things to come. If Formula E resumes this season, it could be a classic battle between da Costa, Günther, and Vergne. That, of course, is a huge “if”.

The response

Formula E has, arguably, come up with the most measured and sensible response to the uncertainty of any motorsport category. While F1 continues to test the patience of its fans and followers with tone-deaf announcements of Grands Prix in countries where health services are currently working around the clock, Formula E - a much smaller and lower-budget championship - has proposed solutions, but admitted it does not have a concrete answer.

Stoffel Vandoorne comes under pressure from Günther in the Race At Home Challenge (courtesy of Formula E)

F1, it must be said, is making these announcements partly out of a sense of duty to promoters and sponsors. Even that admission brings the thought that the maximalist model of many global sports might not be sustainable in a new world where events can be postponed or cancelled at any time. More events might have to adopt the Formula E model, getting off its heels and onto its toes, as Professor Scott Galloway likes to say.

F1, with far more moving parts and teams sometimes numbering more than 1000 employees, plus expensive hosting contracts with countries where permanent circuits have been built, sometimes only for one Grand Prix a year, is in a difficult place. The existential threat to up to five of its teams is one thing. The looming irrelevance of the internal combustion engine to the marketing efforts of all but a handful of niche car manufacturers is another.

While there is an active possibility that motorsport will not be possible in any on-track form in 2020, the most likely way that Formula E can get its season finished is a series of races in Asia, where the pandemic is, in the biggest and most-developed countries, being brought carefully under control. Formula E is keeping an eye on the situation around the world, but is also not being so insensitive as to make suggestions it cannot follow up.

Formula E has not always made right decisions, but in keeping team employee numbers low and capping everything from development budgets to testing days, it has created a business model that may not be wholly recession- or pandemic-proof, but is carrying a lot less fat than the rest of motorsport. Similarly, Extreme E, which is scheduled to have its first meetings in 2021, is in good shape - its spectator-free model might turn out to be the ideal response to a pandemic that will not fully go away for potentially years.

Race at Home

The Formula E Race at Home Challenge has brought back a lot of the magic, allowing us to reunite, virtually, with the Formula E drivers and teams as they sit at their sim rigs. While it isn’t entirely a true-to-life simulation of Formula E - if it were, you can be pretty sure that Vergne and Alexander Sims, two of the drivers who were not regular sim racers, would be closer to the front of the field - it is a triumph in terms of its presentation, and the way the entire sport has pulled out all the stops to make it feel entertaining.

Clearly Formula E, which is staging its sim-races on R-Factor 2, the simulator with the official licence, has worked incredibly hard to make these races, staged in aid of Unicef in a battle-royale format, as immersive as possible. The realism, and the extraordinary render rate of the circuits - the detail of Hong Kong’s ferris wheel and the Electric Docks’ cranes being showreels for the simulator’s engine - add to the experience.

For sim-racing to work as an alternative to motorsport for the quarantined spectator, it’s essential to feel like you’re watching a real-life race, or at least to be able to suspend disbelief. Even with the new quirks like elimination after each lap of the last car on track, it feels realistic - to a point. That point is the damage rating. This is said by Formula E to be 80%, but given the brutal accident Sebastien Buemi was able to drive on from in the Electric Docks E-Prix, where he was barrelled into the catch-fencing, only to soldier on in 10th place, this is questionable.

The reason the sim races are not ready to be staged at 100% damage is because too many of the drivers are not yet at the level in a simulator that they would be in a real-life car. Their base skills, honed behind the wheel, are there, but it’s not their job - they’re not professional sim racers. It’s perhaps like asking a Premier League footballer to take part in a futsal tournament. They could look competent, but not at the level of people practicing and racing every day in sim rigs.

The depth perception and feedback from a simulator just isn’t what it would be in the real thing, and yet it’s just good to be given a treat in these difficult times, and to be reminded of how it feels to see genuine competition. Max Günther is ridiculously good at sim racing, but then he’s also ridiculously good in real life, so that’s realism there. It’s up to the rest of the field to catch up with him. This new normal is okay for now, but it also leaves us wanting more, and maybe that’s for the best.

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