On the eve of the 2024 season in Spain, pre-season tests are being held at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia as part of the Formula E championship.
Aleksandr Seregin
Chief Editor
Daniel Ballarin
Photographer
On the eve of the 2024 season in Spain, pre-season tests are being held at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia as part of the Formula E championship.
The Electric Formula Championship was formed in 2014. Consequently, the upcoming 2024 season will be the 10th anniversary.
These days, Spanish photojournalist Daniel Balarin Lopez is working at the race track in Valencia. He provided his photo material specifically for the agency Asppa Images. A large photo gallery with Daniel’s material is already available on our website, which is updated as photos are transferred.
The first day of tests on October 25 turned out to be hot, in the truest sense of the word. But about everything in order!
Two series of test runs were planned for this day.
The first session took place and was held in a fairly measured and normal mode. The pilots left the pits, ironed the race track, which is configured these days with the use of temporary fences, specifically for tests of the electric Formula. After returning to the pits, engineers already entered the work, who removed the received information from the onboard devices of racing electric formulas. The mechanics made edits to the configuration of the cars, and the pilots went back to the track to test the changes made. Quite tedious, painstaking, but generally interesting, and most importantly necessary work.
Among the teams participating in the electric Formula championship there are such names that once sounded loudly on the race tracks of the world series and US races: Jaguar, Porsche, Andretti, Penske. In the case of the last two, these are quite active teams from the world of American Indycar, which are part of global divisions. The Andretti family renamed their electric team Andretti Global.
By the way, Andretti Global has also changed the livery of its cars for the 2024 season. Fans of Formula 1 Andretti cars were reminded of the recent appearance of HAAS cars.
As for the results of the first session, although they themselves say little in the context of the upcoming 2024 championship, but nevertheless.
Mitch Evans of Jaguar TCS Racing was the fastest, clocking 1 minute 24.474 seconds closer to noon. His best result was 0.143 seconds faster than the result of Antonio Felix da Costa from Porsche, and the champion of the 2nd season of Formula E Sebastien Buemi from Envision Racing showed the third result.
Eduardo Mortara from Mahindra rose only to the fourth line of the test protocol. Next to him is the former Formula 1 driver, and now the current Porsche team driver Pascal Wehrlein.
As for the newcomers of the championship debutants. First you need to say that «beginners» is a conditional term in the case of the Formula—E. Experienced drivers from a wide variety of racing series come to this championship: Formula 1, Formula 2, Indycar, DTM and other series.
Russian fans will rather be interested to know that Robert Schwartzman took the place of Belgian and former Formula 1 driver Stoffel Vandoorne in DS Penske. Zane Maloney replaced the current champion Jake Dennis in Andretti Global, Taylor Barnard took the place of Sam Bird, who signed a contract with the new McLaren, while Luca Giotto and Victor Martins took the place of Oliver Rowland and Sasha Fenestraz in the team of the Japanese Nissan corporation.
Barnard made an impression by showing the fastest result shortly before the second hour of the three-hour session. As a result, he ended up seventh in speed, behind Maximilian Gunther from Maserati MSG.
Nico Muller (Abt Cupra) and Sergio Sette Camara (ERT, formerly NIO) were next, and Nick Cassidy rounded out the top 10 in his first race for Jaguar.
After the end of the first test session, the pilots went for a well-deserved rest and lunch. However, it was at this time that the unexpected happened. And this case, by the way, again hits the reputation of the electric Formula in the most painful way.
A fire started in the garage of the battery supplier Williams Advanced Engineering, the paddock was partially covered with acrid smoke. When the smoke cleared and the fire was extinguished by the emergency services, it became clear that the source of the fire was the battery on the car of the Russian Robert Schwartzman from the American team DS Penske, which was removed after the car stopped on the track during the morning session.
It is worth saying that the press service of the championship quickly informed all participants of the tests about what happened. It was also reported that this incident was not related to the new fast charging systems that were first used on the track ahead of their debut in the new season.
The result was a small damage to property, and one WAE employee was taken to a local hospital for a preventive examination.
“During a break between training sessions, a fire was detected in the pit lane and in the garage, which was localized,” Formula E said in a statement. “The Incident Response Team immediately took measures to localize the incident, while the main building of the circuit and the boxes were quickly evacuated.
“One person was examined by doctors and taken to the hospital for preventive examinations.
“Formula E, the FIA and local fire authorities are investigating the cause and will provide further information shortly.”
Then the organizers announced the cancellation of the second training session. And even later it turned out that the fire affected the Mahindra Racing team.
“As a result of the fire, Mahindra Racing received damage to its property. The damage includes, but is not limited to, the team’s IT assets, engineering stations and both race cars,” the team explained in a statement.
The pilots returned to the track on Thursday. This time, incidents off the track were avoided and the day passed positively.
Mitch Evans was the fastest again that day. Da Costa, who was second on Tuesday, reached the cockpit only in the afternoon, and the first part of the day his car was driven by the winner of the ADAC Prototype Cup LMP3 race Gabriela Zhilkova. Eduardo Mortaro of the Mahindra team finished third that day, setting his best test time, even despite the team’s difficulties caused by fire damage in neighboring boxes.
The results of the day can be found in the table. The photo gallery of the third day will be available on the weekend.
TEXT AUTHOR: ALEKSANDR SEREGIN, ASPPA IMAGES, 2023 / PHOTO: DANIEL BALLARIN
