Formula’s co-founder tells this paper he believes the Circuit could house a permanent technical headquarters for Europe
While fans are already familiar with Formula E, it doesn’t hurt to give context to this ‘made in Spain’ category, albeit based in London. Alberto Longo is the current chief championship officer of Formula E, a category that began rolling out in 2014 but was forged a year earlier when Alejandro Agag, thanks to his relationship with
Adrian Camposwith whom he shared a GP2 team, met Jean Todt, president of the International Automobile Federation –FIA– in the restaurant ‘La Stresa’ in Paris.
there it is too
Albert Longo, and together they explain to Todt the possibility of holding an electric single-seater championship that will stimulate the new mobility that is beginning to take shape in the automotive world. Todt trusts these two Spaniards and is committed to giving the championship the coverage of the International Federation.
The rest is summed up by a huge amount of work from an essentially Spanish team founded in London who have managed to take electric racing to an extraordinary level of global popularity, so much so that by 2023 nine brands will officially compete, one number yet never seen in an FIA championship.
In 2015, Liberty – now also the owner of Formula 1 – became the majority shareholder in Formula E, boosting its global spread, while
Alexander Agg He left general management in 2019 to take the next steps of his electric dream within the Liberty structure: the Extreme E 4×4 competition, launched in 2021 and the motorboat racing design, also electric, E1, scheduled for 2023.
Since 2019, Alberto Longo has taken over the day-to-day reins of Formula E, in which Agag is still prominent – in fact, he took part in the testing at Valencia – which is why we met Alberto in one of the VIP races. Boxes from Cheste.
– The pre-season testing will be conducted permanently at the Cheste Circuit, do you have any plans for them to be here all the time?
– We are delighted to be in Valencia, we consider it our home since the days of GP2, and we are talking to politicians in the region to find a way to have a permanent establishment in Valencia. In Formula E we are looking for a new logistics base in Europe as the post-Brexit London base generates import costs every time we go out, so we are looking for a new logistics base and Valencia is a very strong candidate.
– Formula E started in Beijing on September 13, 2014, did you expect the championship to be where it is now in nine years?
– Both Alejandro and I have quite positive natures and we knew we had made something that would last. Now I couldn’t imagine that there were nine manufacturers with the prestige we have on the grid, that we race in the center of eleven of the biggest cities in the world, the 16 international partners that we have… we imagine that we have this grid of drivers that for me is the most competitive in the world today, but I imagined we would be there as the world moves towards electric mobility.
– This year they will premiere the third generation of single-seaters which is the same for all teams except some of the mechanics. How is this Generation 3 of Formula E?
– The car is more powerful, with 350 kilowatts or 470 hp compared to the previous 250 kW or 335 hp, it is lighter, with 840 kilowatts compared to 900 before, it has no rear brakes and has a huge new brake regeneration in the front part. Because they didn’t have rear brakes, the drivers looked at us strangely, so the FIA has decided to put in a secondary brake in case there is an electrical fault, but that’s not helpful for the competition. The car is faster and more difficult for the drivers to control, so we will see more mistakes and even more exciting races.
– In addition to the new car, Formula E races will be run in laps this year instead of 45 minutes plus one lap. Why this change?
– What is fundamental is the fact that we grow up. We are a world championship and we should be regulated the same as the other world championships. Because we are quite agile and have an ecosystem of teams that allow us to change the rules quite easily, we decided to go bigger, and the lap counting is easier to understand for the audience watching us at home. It also adds complexity to the engineers and I think we will see great racing.
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How will Formula E developments be transferred to road cars?
– We can give three examples of how what has been developed in Formula E has reached the street. The Jaguar i-Pace is an electric street SUV that has managed to achieve 10 per cent more fuel efficiency with the same battery and mechanics thanks to programming developed by Jaguar here at the track. The second is that the battery range of a car as famous as the Nissan Leaf is 181 percent more efficient thanks to what Nissan has developed here. Just to give a further piece of information, the Mercedes EQXX prototype made a single charge journey from Stuttgart to Silverstone, also with the participation of the Mercedes Formula E team, covering more than 1,200 kilometres. All developments that are made here via ‘software’ make the electric motor more and more efficient and if we add the development of batteries to that, street cars with an autonomy of 600 kilometers or 700 kilometers have already been reached, and soon they will break through the 1,000 kilometer mark and the Formula E has helped make this possible.
– This year, Maserati teams compete as teams and, for the first time, a Spanish brand, Cupra, hand in hand with ABT.
– Cupra has a strategic partner with the ABT team, which was formerly with Audi and is in Cupra’s Extreme E, our electric 4×4 category. We are very proud to have this Spanish brand, as we already had with Adrián Campos’ team at the start of Formula E and we know they will do well in the category. their official return to the league, it says it all. We still have room for one team, but now we are looking for stability for the next two years, in which we will not change anything. We have Maserati, Cupra, McLaren, Porsche, Nissan, Nio, Jaguar, Andretti, DS-Penske, Mahindra, Envision… that’s all we could ask for.
– What is your commitment to the championship now that the winning team, Mercedes, is not there?
– We have such good teams that it is very difficult to make predictions. No one is showing their cards here and there are a lot of unknowns, for example McLaren is driven by Nissan and they went faster than Nissan in the first practice sessions…so there’s no telling who will win. That’s the beauty of this championship, anyone can win and the championship is decided in the last lap of the last race.
– Formula E held two races in Cheste due to the pandemic, but when will we have a city race in Spain and a Spanish driver?
– In terms of the races, this year we are opening four venues: Sao Paulo in Brazil, Cape Town in South Africa, Portland in the United States and Hyderabad in India, all with a capacity of around 60,000 spectators, and it is the format to those that we want to catch the races. Normally it takes us three or four years to get to a city, and in Spain there’s interest from several cities to have Formula E, so we’re working with a Spanish promoter to be in Spain, but it depends don’t detract from us as a championship. As for the Spanish riders, it’s a question that should be put to the teams, we’ve already had that and of course we would love to have Spanish talents in the FE again.
– There is talk of the possibility of recharging the batteries during the race, as refueling, what about this idea?
– We’ve already done tests and we’ll make stops of about 30 seconds with a ten percent charge of the battery and again, there will be a lot of strategy and a lot of technology, which defines Formula E. Today there are already street chargers of 400 kilowatt hours. We are testing 600 kilowatt chargers, which can be expanded to 800 kWh. We like to be the test bench and know that what is done here will have an impact on the market, because we are the platform on which all manufacturers have decided to present their technological development to transfer it to road cars.
– They are premiering the third generation of the Formula E car and there is already talk of the future Gen4 car.
– On the same day we launched the Gen3, we met with all manufacturers and teams to see what the Gen4 should have, which will be released in three and a half years. You would be surprised to know what points were in that meeting. In this industry you have to start working early because if you don’t you will become obsolete. The Gen3 is much improved in regeneration, which is one of the keys to the future of electric cars, we’ll see what the Gen4 brings us. Formula E will start its ninth season on January 14 in Mexico.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
