d56tuye

74 Porsche in Formula E
On 22 November 2019, driver André
Lotterer walked off the podium at
the Riyadh Street Circuit in Saudi
Arabia with a second-place finish
and a huge grin on his face. For his
team, TAG Heuer Porsche, this was supposed to have
been a toe-dip into the world of Formula E racing
– the manufacturer’s first race in the sport, and its
first venture into Formula competition in roughly
three decades. But, surprisingly to some, there stood
Lotterer. “When I told the team a few weeks back that
I wanted to reach the podium, they looked at me like
I was mad,” he told reporters.
Mad is a great choice of word. But while Porsche
enthusiasts might not go that far when it comes to
questions about the manufacturer’s return to singleseater
racing, there will inevitably be questions
about the intentions here. What are the benefits of
this return? Why Formula E? And, well, what even is
Formula E?
Simply put, Formula E is single-seater electric
car racing. As the story goes, it was conceived in
a small Italian restaurant in Paris, on 3 March 2011,
when Jean Todt, the president of the world governing
body of motorsport, the Federation Internationale de
l’Automobile (FIA), presented the idea to politicians
Alejandro Agag and Antonio Tajani, as well as
Italian actor Teo Teocoli. Tajani, a supporter of
the electrification of the automobile industry and
reducing CO2 emissions, backed the proposal. By
2014, the inaugural season of Formula E, with ten
teams and 35 drivers, was underway.
The makeup of the sport is rather similar to that
of any other Formula series: drivers in super-fast,
single-seater cars travel the world to race and collect
points. Where Formula E is different, however, is that
firstly, all circuits are based in city centres and range
from 1.2 to 2.1 miles long. Events feature technological
hoo-ha, autograph sessions and live music. There
are race simulators where, if you’re one of the fastest
racers, the drivers themselves will come out for a
meet-and-greet to take you on (really!). And many a
large flashing screen support claims about what is
potentially the vehicle of the future today. Oh, and
rather than staggering practice, qualifying and the
race itself over a number of days, Formula E jampacks
it all into one single race day – often with two
races taking place in the same city on back-to-back
days (there’s some in-race technicalities too, but we’ll
get to those later.)
The main purpose behind this modern-looking,
electro-charged sport, then, is to create a race format
that, its organisers hope, is as even and actionpacked
as possible, while still focusing on the ethos
that has been behind the advancement of electrical
automation since Ferdinand Porsche created the
electric-powered P1 more than a century ago.
This season, Formula E’s sixth, will feature 12
teams of two drivers – each classed as either a
‘customer team’ or a ‘manufacturer team’. Porsche,
like fellow newcomer Mercedes-Benz, falls into the
manufacturer category, as while the likes of batteries,
chassis and body works are identical for all teams,
components such as the powertrain and gearboxes
can be modified and built in-house (customer teams
can buy parts from various manufacturers).
For Porsche, this has meant taking the standardised
battery and Spark SRT05E chassis (known
colloquially as the Gen2), fitting it with its own
technology and coming out on the other side with
the Porsche 99X Electric: a sleek, low-profile car
that’s far removed from anything it’s raced before.
The best comparison, perhaps, is to say it feels like
something from Scalextric; a hypersonic Le Manslike
creature which, until you see it, you’d be right
to think could only exist and be controlled through
some sort of console. That’s because, well, that’s
exactly the format Porsche chose to unveil the 99X
Electric – the brand opting to release it through a
livestream of the Formula E Unlocked video game.
Under the chassis, the 99X will feature a system
dubbed by Porsche as the E-Performance Powertrain.
Parts of this setup are borrowed from the electrical
drive system that featured in the company’s
successful 919 Hybrid Le Mans Prototype 1 racer, such
as an 800-volt electrical system and a permanent
synchronous electric motor.
Those responsible for racing the TAG Heuer
Porsche’s 99X are factory drivers Lotterer and Neel
Jani, while its competitors have opted for a mixture
LEFT Lotterer, who became a
Porsche works driver in 2017, has
previous experience in Formula
E, racing in the 2017/18 season