Formula-E pre season testing 23 & 25th August

The world first fully electric FIA approved championship began its 3 days pre season testing this week at Donington Park…

The electric powered cars of the Formula-E series took a short drive from their workshops to the pit lane of Donington park to start their preparations for season three. Formula-E isn’t the easiest championship to fully prepare for, with majority of the season stops being temporary street circuits it’s hard to find a real idea of how the car may tackle these tracks as you can hardly shut down a city center for 3 days testing. Donington being the base for all teams it only seems natural to hold their testing there too, the bonus being they can literally drive their cars from the garage to the pit lane on to the circuit in about 30 seconds, it’s something you can see them do when they might have big changes or new parts to test during the season..

This years biggest obvious change to these techno racers is the new front wing, its new double layer design does really change the look and style of the cars, making it more aggressive and futuristic really adds to the unique look of the single seaters. Unique design for a unique championship, drivers have praised this new front end saying it increases grip. Apart from the new front wing the other big change is the new Michelin rubber, which is has been said to be a huge improvement over the old all weather tyre they provided. The new tyre heats up a lot quicker to provide optimal grip earlier in it’s tyre life making them a lot easier to bring into working range on circuits especially with cooler ambient temperatures. Again the drivers have all praised this tyre for its ease to heat up but also say that it feels different as the tyre moves around under braking and when accelerating out of corners.

Day 1

Day 1 began under glorious sunshine with the first public rollout of the new look front wing, DS Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird was the first to venture out and really made the best of the day racking up the most amount of track time with a total of 28 laps and ending up 4th quickest showing the DS Virgin Racing team hasn’t lost any of its speed over the summer break.

Jaguar arrived on the Formula-E scene not having announced either of its two drivers for the season – they had a choice of 4 drivers testing for them over the 3 days. Adam Carroll was on testing duty completing all 3 days with Alex Lynn, Mitch Evans and Harry Tincknall sharing second car. It was a strong first day for Jaguar, both cars in the top 10 showing they have potential for the season and can only improve with more development miles..

Day one ended with the reigning champion Sebastian Buemi on top of the time sheets with a fantastic 1:30.143, a time that was 0.7s faster than Nick Heidfeld’s time, it was actually only two tenths slower than the Formula-E lap record from the year before set by Lucas Di Grassi. Buemi’s time really set the bar high for the next couple of days…

Day 2

Day 2 and it began under similar scenes of day one, blistering heat on the hottest day this year breaking into the 30’s. The second new team this year, the Chinese outfit under the name Techeetah, they ran only one driver on day one (Ma Qing Hua). Coming into day two their second driver had arrived and lit the timing screens up in the morning session in his first outing. Jean Eric Vergne, the former Formula 1 racer into Formula E convert has raced since season one, former Aguri squad now Techeetah has acquired Vergne for the 2016/2017 and instantly it seems he is on the pace. Vergne went out towards the end of the morning session and set a new Formula E lap record of 1:29.634 a whole 3 tenths faster than Lucas Di Grassi’s previous record and 0.5 ahead of Buemi’s fastest time of day 1. Vergne wasn’t the only man to beat the record, newcomer to Mahindra ,Félix Rosenqvist, also proved his worth only .085 slower and Buemi improved to 0.131 slower than Vergne.

Day 3

Final day of testing and it saw pretty much everyone go out early in the morning session. Rain had arrived over night and provided the teams a morning session on a damp track track to test the all weather tyres and how they matched up in these changing conditions, new data was gathered, vital for teams so they could understand more about the new compound of Michelin rubber.

Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport team topped the final days testing with Daniel Abt’s morning session time of 1:30.073. He seemed to get to grips with the wet conditions more than the others, with majority of drivers struggling with a lack of grip and taking trips into the gravel, red flags interrupted the session notably for Mario Engel and Nico Prost who got stuck in the gravel whilst hunting for that elusive grip in the cold damp conditions.

NEXTEV test driver Dean Stoneman ran race simulations during the afternoon and over the whole day racked up a total 44 laps, Jaguars 4th different driver Harry Tincknall wasn’t far behind him on a total of 39 laps completed, also a lot of long runs to really get to grips on his first appearance in the Jaguar machine.

Between the two sessions a heavier shower passed over the Leicestershire circuit supplying the teams with a fully wet surface to tackle. As soon as the second session began pretty much all teams were out making the most of the crucial wet track testing time and gaining as much data as possible. Antonio Félix Da Costa set the bar with 30 minutes to go with a lap that was 3 seconds clear of anyone else, others rose to that challenge and soon he was being hounded by others going seeking that quickest time on the final day.