Formula E Beijing

[dtrump]

Giving motorsport a bad rep

Kill it now before it starts to do some real damage

[DS240]

JonRB said:

re: the pit stops

I can see that they introduce an element of "range anxiety" and strategy that "real" pitstops also have - choosing to drain the batteries on your 1st car more quickly and then take it more easy on your second car. So I can understand the decision to do this rather than two separate sprint races.
However, they do look absolutely ridiculous. Especially pulling into a gazebo and hopping out in there.

It looked odd. I didn't know why cars were holding in the pits with little rush.

Also crew members stood around as if a race wasn't even going on!

[anonymous-user]

JonRB said:

I'm willing to keep an open mind on it. I think the fact that they have managed to convince many cities, including London, to host a street race is something to be applauded.

It's in its first season. It's going to have some teething problems.

Hopefully they will respond swiftly to the shortcomings and we'll see rapid evolution.

I guess the lack of noise, slow speeds, all over in a day format was quite attractive to the cities. And the bag of money.........

[MG CHRIS]

For people moaning about the technology not being good enough well its not going to improve without investment and as f1 shows or motorsport for that matter technology through sport will pass into road cars so we do need a series to show this for the electric road car market.

The noise doesn't bother me used to electric rc car racing. For the first race was ok yes things need improving but atleast its been given a go and we do have 20 cars on the grid for a new series that's pretty good going.

[Big Al.]

corozin said:

Oh dear, what an awful spectacle.

Actual RC (Radio controlled) racing is far more exciting. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

Back to proper motorsport for me. Anything but this rubbish.

That just about sums it up for me, watched it tonight to tell you the truth I watched it this evening on my return from Goodwood Revival and guess what couldn't hear a bloody thing, that could be as a result of listening to all those deafening V8's all day.

So I turned off after 30 mins and deleted the programme, shan't be watching that again.

[JonRB]

DS240 said:

It looked odd. I didn't know why cars were holding in the pits with little rush.

Also crew members stood around as if a race wasn't even going on!

I agree; it did seem rather lacking in urgency. They really need to address that.

[designndrive62]

JonRB said:

I agree; it did seem rather lacking in urgency. They really need to address that.

There is a minimum pit lane time but it's poorly thought out. Rather than a mandatory stationary time, there is a. Minimum time you must be in the pit lane from, from entry to exit, hence why we saw some cars sat in the pit waiting for the moment they could leave and then wouldn't cross the pit exit before the time. However I believe Heidfeld jumped into the car as quick as possible and then Slowed dramatically just before the pit exit, to increase his pit time, this also slowed everyone else up behind him, hence how Prost got such a big lead after pit stops. They should really just say that the driver change should take 'x' amount of seconds, rather than overall time in pit lane.

[TheAngryDog]

The BBC article about the crash seems to suggest the blame is with Heidfeld?

BBC Article said:

Former F1 driver Heidfeld was attempting to take the lead when he clipped the son of Formula 1 legend Alain Prost, Nicolas, and smashed heavily into the barrier before walking away unharmed to confront the French driver.

Pretty sure most see it differently!

[marshalla]

designndrive62 said:

JonRB said:

I agree; it did seem rather lacking in urgency. They really need to address that.

There is a minimum pit lane time but it's poorly thought out. Rather than a mandatory stationary time, there is a. Minimum time you must be in the pit lane from, from entry to exit, hence why we saw some cars sat in the pit waiting for the moment they could leave and then wouldn't cross the pit exit before the time. However I believe Heidfeld jumped into the car as quick as possible and then Slowed dramatically just before the pit exit, to increase his pit time, this also slowed everyone else up behind him, hence how Prost got such a big lead after pit stops. They should really just say that the driver change should take 'x' amount of seconds, rather than overall time in pit lane.

Would much rather see them doing stops as fast as possible without changing cars. Swappable battery packs should be the answer. First swap free, then a small penalty for each additional one used so they can trade off between speed and range.

[JonRB]

marshalla said:

Would much rather see them doing stops as fast as possible without changing cars. Swappable battery packs should be the answer. First swap free, then a small penalty for each additional one used so they can trade off between speed and range.

I thought that at the time. But then I concluded that it was such an obvious thing that they must have seriously considered it and rejected it for some reason.

[marshalla]

JonRB said:

I thought that at the time. But then I concluded that it was such an obvious thing that they must have seriously considered it and rejected it for some reason.

I suspect they can't get the battery packaging right yet. The damn things probably occupy most of the chassis.

[JonRB]

marshalla said:

I suspect they can't get the battery packaging right yet. The damn things probably occupy most of the chassis.

Yes, you're probably right. In fact, they probably concluded it was easier to have 2 cars.

[Retrostate]

The battery/motor/gearbox assembly is around 40% of the chassis. Everything from the roll hoop backwards is structural power unit due to the size of the battery required, along with the crash proof packaging. The battery also had to be designed with air transport in mind as Li-Ion batteries are pretty volatile and their transport heavily regulated. The plans for the future include longer life batteries as well as inductive charging. In fact, the safety and pace cars are inductive charged while they wait at the side of the circuit.

I enjoyed the race, good overtaking. If anything I feel it's a little less manufactured than modern F1. No DRS here for a free overtake and using higher power depletes your range so a balance must be found. The most interesting thing for me is that the drivers regenerate the battery via a paddle on the wheel. During re-gen the car is slowed so through some corners you can get away with not braking but pulling the re-gen paddle instead.

Putrajaya should be a little better. Much tighter roads, more of a circuit feel layout and a pretty bumpy surface. Monaco will be a fun one too, a shorter layout than the F1 circuit..

[sjn2004]

Very slow and boring, formation lap was frustratingly slow that you'd want to jump under a bus,

Two cars? Maybe interchangeable batteries in pods would have been a better idea?

But the noise, that squeeling high pitched sound gave me a headache after about 10 mins and I had to switch off.

[garycat]

There's another racing Nico who could learn a thing or two about post-race behaviour from Nico Prost

[anonymous-user]

MG CHRIS said:

For people moaning about the technology not being good enough well its not going to improve without investment and as f1 shows or motorsport for that matter technology through sport will pass into road cars so we do need a series to show this for the electric road car market.

The noise doesn't bother me used to electric rc car racing. For the first race was ok yes things need improving but atleast its been given a go and we do have 20 cars on the grid for a new series that's pretty good going.

Road car electric technology is streets ahead of anything in racing. Very little of practical use comes from racing.

[Altrezia]

If this is the future of motorsport then I may hang up my helmet.

I found it hard to watch it was so dull. Slow cars, no grip and a boring track.

Let's see what happens next time out, but so far, not impressed.

[kiseca]

Just watched that now. I want it to work because, well progress must.

But damn it's going to be hard to love this. The cars look like pimped F1 Replicas. The sound is horrible. Silence would be better than the 22 warbling pigeons that I was hearing. The DJ and fan boost and car swap are stupid ideas. Just have two heats. They really do look slow too.

Prost's move was mad, which is hard for me to say as I seem to be one of the few fans of his dad around here. Very disappointed not to see him at least go up to Heidfeld's car and at least see if he's OK.

Also I don't understand why the cars have so many gears. I thought the advantage of electric motors was you didn't need lots of gears? And why do they need those big sidepods with the large air intakes? Do they really need that much cooling?

There's an awful lot of gimmick about all this.

The track was pants too.

Edited by kiseca on Sunday 14th September 10:23

[CrutyRammers]

Flicked through it for 15 minutes but it really wasn't very gripping. Mind you, street circuits rarely are IMO.
And yeah, the noise. Jeeze.

[kambites]

I think it has potential once the spec cars disappear for future seasons, although there's probably a good chance of such a performance/range disparity between different cars that there is little actual racing at the front. They need to ditch the daft gimmicks if they want it to appeal to actual racing fans rather than social media types.