2015-16 Formula E season

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

I think we need a thread for this, otherwise the original FE thread will become massive.

And it'll be this time next weekend that we'll all be sitting down in front of the TV watching the season opening Beijing ePrix (as I doubt many of us are going to China to watch it - have fun if you are!)

Of course, the season starting in China, but here's the calendar as of typing:

Rd1 - Beijing ePrix (China) - 24 October
Rd2 - Putrajaya ePrix (Malaysia) - 7 November
Rd3 - Punta del Este ePrix (Uruguay) - 19 December
Rd4 - Buenos Aires ePrix (Argentina) - 6 February
Rd5 - TBA (Mexico City rumoured) - 12 March
Rd6 - Long Beach ePrix (USA) - 2 April
Rd7 - Paris ePrix (France) - 23 April
Rd8 - Berlin ePrix (Germany) - 21 May
Rd9 - Moscow ePrix (Russia) - 4 June
Rd10, 11 - London ePrix (UK) - 2, 3 July

Also in the rumour mill is a potential Swiss round. The Swiss do have the most wins of any nation in Formula E history - Sebastien Buemi's 3 wins last season makes sure of that!

A change this season sees the teams developing their own drivetrain, with only Amlin Andretti and Team Aguri opting for last seasons, encountering difficulties in pre-season testing with their own. Maximum power outage has also been increased by 20kW to 170kW for the races. Of course, at the end of the season, the chassis will again be open for development.

With all of that out of the way, lets see who the drivers are for which teams.

Renault e.dams - Nicolas Prost (FRA), Sebastien Buemi (SUI)
Dragon Racing - Loic Duval (FRA), Jerome d'Ambrosio (BEL)
ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport - Lucas di Grassi (BRA), Daniel Abt (GER)
NEXTEV TCR - Nelson Piquet Jr (BRA), Oliver Turvey (GBR)
DS Virgin Racing - Sam Bird (GBR), Jean-Eric Vergne (FRA)
Amlin Andretti - Robin Frijns (NED), Simona de Silvestro (SUI)
Team Aguri - Antonio Felix da Costa (POR), Nathanael Berthon (FRA)
Mahindra Racing - Bruno Senna (BRA), Nick Heidfeld (GER)
Venturi - Jacques Villeneuve (CAN), Stephane Sarrazin (FRA)
Trulli - Vitantonio Liuzzi (ITA), Salvador Duran (MEX)

Reigning champion Nelson Piquet Jr remains at the NEXTEV TCR team that he won last seasons' title with. Runner-up Buemi remains at 2014-15 team's champions Renault e.dams, alongside Prost in an unchanged line-up. Jean-Eric Vergne's move from Andretti to DS Virgin Racing is probably the most high profile move.

Frijns, Berthon and Villeneuve will all be in their first ever Formula E races when the lights go out in China.

That's all I have time for as a season preview, let the 2015-16 Formula E season begin!

[pirenzo]

Nicely introduced, thanks for doing that.

I think e.DAMS and Abt will still be the teams to beat, barring catastrophe. Both teams had their calamitous moments last season (I'm thinking particularly of e.DAMS holding their cars 10 seconds too long in Moscow and Abt's costly disqualifications in Bejing and Berlin).

I don't think NEXTEV's offering is quite in the same league as the others. DS Virgin seem to be well placed behind the front two and it will be interesting to see how Mahindra improve now they've changed their driver line up and dropped Carlin.

[NaBUru38]

I'll try to attend the Punta del Este race and take some photos for Wikipedia.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Another announcement has been made. As well as maximum power outage increasing, the race distance for FE has increased - by 1 lap! However this could, considering the batteries have as much life as they did last season, have some major implications on reliability. It looks like the focus will be very much on driving fast whilst saving power. A certain Mr Piquet Jr was quite handy at that last season.

But we'll have to wait and see - 5 days isn't much of a wait though!

[pirenzo]

Originally Posted by Biscuits In A Red Bull

It looks like the focus will be very much on driving fast whilst saving power. A certain Mr Piquet Jr was quite handy at that last season.

The strategy last season was to save a lap's worth of battery capacity, and go a lap longer with the first car. It was pretty marginal at most tracks.

Making the race a lap longer simply prevents teams from attempting that strategy, unless the gains they make in efficiency are enough to keep it an option at some tracks.

[NaBUru38]

I think that energy saving is a boring show. I want drivers drive fast.

[canamman]

Thanks for the FE preview Biscuit. I enjoyed the show last season
and will keep up with it this year. Here's hoping for multiple
winners like the inaugural season.

[pirenzo]

http://fiaformulae.com/en/news/2015/...ck-record.aspx

Well that's rather ominous. The two e.DAMS drivers were two seconds clear of the rest in the shakedown this morning. Perhaps they were the only ones to use the 200kW?

It's only single-lap pace of course. Here's hoping the race is a different matter.

[rwintle]

I had lost track of the schedule and had no idea it was starting now! Thank you BiaRB for posting this nice lead-in summary.

[courageous]

Trulli have withdrawn - no word on why or if it is just for this round

[pirenzo]

Freight problems according to Autosport, which could see them miss round two as well. They shipped the motors themselves so they would have more time to work on them but it looks as though it's backfired on them.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Freight problems? Really? I suspect they still have got their major problems with the Motomatica. It's brave of them to continue with it, with Andretti having jumped ship.

Today's session was a one-off practice so it's very unlikely Imo that those times representative for the whole field, but I wouldn't be surprised if Renault get the front row locked out. The race poses totally different issues and strains on the car, powertrain, etc, however, so who knows how representative even qualifying could be!

[pirenzo]

Trulli team statement.

Apparently the motors and inverters have been at Beijing customs since 8th October. It's almost as if they've ended up in lost property or something else daft.

[bella]

8th october? with the greatest of respect, that raises a lot of questions, none of which do them any favours at all.

if beijing are anything like shanghai airport they are very very particular about documents, but that can be easily fixed if you have someone who knows what they're doing looking after the paperwork, and a good local agent. mind you, if there was someone who knew what they were doing looking after it it wouldn't have been stuck in customs since 8th october.

honestly, it's not hard. it can be a monster ball ache but it's not hard...

[pirenzo]

What I don't understand is how they weren't aware that the crate hadn't cleared customs all that time. Wouldn't the courier notify them of a problem? It's all very odd. An unclaimed package sitting at airport customs for two weeks is bound to require a lot of hassle to release.

[bella]

yep, the agents remind you pretty constantly, at least for the first week or so. and to be fair, if you've say, forgotten you've just shipped your drivetrain (quite important when you're running a racing car) and don't answer correspondence about it you've probably got a staffing issue at some level...

i don't buy any level of that explanation. why would you be desperate for extra time to work on it, and then ship it so far in advance of the actual race? did they tell the organisers that they were going to be shipping it separately so they could make sure they had the customs paperwork for it? is that even allowed in the championship regs? it's a bit different to f1, you're not allowed to touch the freight cases until a set time on a set day and you have to use specific seals. so many questions, so much mindless speculation to be done

[pirenzo]

I think the others were shipped together by FormulaE themselves at the start of September. So Team Trulli had an extra month or so. I guess the plan will have been for it to go from the airport to wherever the other cars were being held. Perhaps Trulli assumed the promoter would handle it from the airport?

Anyway, I was hoping to watch a little bit of practice, but it seems Formula E have decided to exclude the UK from the live streaming service.

The race will be shown live on ITV4, but there will be no coverage of practice or qualifying in the UK.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

And boom, Renault do lock out the front row. Was not expecting Heidfeld up there!

Piquet starts 18th, 0.9s slower than Turvey! Now we'll see how the cars and drivers fare in race trim...

[pirenzo]

Well Buemi is clearing up isn't he? 24 seconds ahead after 15 laps, including two FCY's.

Dragon look like they have the best energy efficiency, DS Virgin the worst. And it appears that Andretti and Aguri can be fairly competitive in race trim.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Well, da Costa can be competitive! Berthon is only 8th because of luck, same with Turvey in 7th. Very surprised NEXTEV are so far from the pace. Dragon do look handy though. Maybe not a win, but podiums look likely.

[pirenzo]

Originally Posted by Biscuits In A Red Bull

Well, da Costa can be competitive! Berthon is only 8th because of luck, same with Turvey in 7th. Very surprised NEXTEV are so far from the pace. Dragon do look handy though. Maybe not a win, but podiums look likely.

Meanwhile the E.dams car is so quick it doesn't even need a rear wing! Incredible that Prost can keep going with it hanging off like that.

Either that or they're just for show anyway.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Very good race, but Buemi... ...wow...

[Nikki Katz]

According to Autosport, Duran's left Trulli and is replaced by Trulli. The cars aren't impounded any longer, but they failed scrutineering, so they're still not allowed to race. I love a good farce

The race seems to be being broadcast live in the UK (crack of dawn) with no repeats at all. ITV have 4 channels and nothing to show on any of them, so this isn't exactly good publicity, especially since most of ITV4's schedule is taken up by the BTCC which ended several weeks ago.

[pirenzo]

Originally Posted by Nikki Katz

According to Autosport, Duran's left Trulli and is replaced by Trulli. The cars aren't impounded any longer, but they failed scrutineering, so they're still not allowed to race. I love a good farce

The situation at Trulli is a complete shambles. I'd love to know what is really going on behind the scenes, but nobody seems to have any information. They must surely be in danger of losing their entry...

Originally Posted by Nikki Katz

The race seems to be being broadcast live in the UK (crack of dawn) with no repeats at all. ITV have 4 channels and nothing to show on any of them, so this isn't exactly good publicity, especially since most of ITV4's schedule is taken up by the BTCC which ended several weeks ago.

I think the Formula E youtube channel is quite good for race highlights, although they probably don't appear for a few days after the event.

EDIT: according to the Formula E website, ITV1 has highlights at 09:25 on Sunday morning

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

That has to be the most chaotic race!!!!!

Robin Frijns is my hero for that drive...