Extreme E: Is it here to Stay?

Extreme-E: Is ‘sustainable’ motorsport here to stay?

After 3 years of planning, the inaugural Extreme E race finally took place in Saudi Arabia with the desert X-Prix in Alula. There were countless unknowns heading into the race weekend, and whilst the weekend was certainly a success, many questions remain about the sport’s format and there were a number of teething issues that hindered the quality of racing and left fans confused.

Does Extreme E have the potential to become a successful and fresh form of motorsport, and in turn an effective platform to highlight the issue of climate change; or is it a format thrown together that will fail to capture the public eye?

What is Extreme E?

Founded by Alejandro Agag - also the founder of Formula E - Extreme E is an all-new form of motorsport in which the sports messaging around sustainability and awareness of climate change is as important as the racing itself.

The 2021 season consists of five races in areas in which climate change is most prominent, including the arctic and Amazon rainforest. The cars are electric Odyssey SUVs, produce around 620 brake horsepower, go from 0-60 mph in less than 4.5 seconds, and are designed to deal with steep gradients across all kinds of surfaces.

There are nine teams, each with two drivers, and each team must have one female and one male driver that drive half the race each - a unique move that promotes Extreme E’s commitment to equality and diversity as well as sustainability.

The sport has attracted high profile names on all fronts; team owners include high profile American racing team Chip Ganassi, Andretti Motorsport, and three F1 world champions in Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button; drivers include Button himself, W series champion Jamie Chadwick rallying legends Sebastien Loeb and Carlos Sainz Snr; and even designers such as Adrian Newey have been brought into team management.

The weekend format was adapted less than a week before the inaugural race. Qualifying was changed to follow a time trial format rather than races, with aggregate qualifying over two runs on Saturday deciding grid order for the semi-finals.

Saturday saw the Semi-Final take place between the top 3 teams from qualifying, and then top 2 of the semi-final progress to the final. Then there’s the ‘Crazy Race’, for the next 3 teams from qualifying and from which the winner also advances to the final. After this, the bottom 3 teams from qualifying take part in the ‘Shooutout’, which determines their final finishing position.

The last act of this somewhat complicated process was the Final, with 3 teams battling it out for the race win. Points are awarded across all elements of qualifying and the races, but the winner of the final takes away 25 points.

How did Extreme E’s first-weekend fare?

The reason for the late change in format was due to concerns about visibility, with the cars kicking up a considerable amount of dust. These worries proved true in the Shootout when Ganassi driver Kyle LeDuc drove directly into the Abt Cupra car of Claudia Hurtgen, taking both cars out of the race.

Asides from the crash, the poor visibility in meant that overtaking was impossible for large parts of the race too, and even when a move was made, the dust hindered the view of the action and the overtake was unseen. Whilst each climate raced on is unique and next round - the Ocean X-Prix in Senegal - shouldn’t pose the same sort of issue, it’s something that the organisers should have anticipated and made changes way before the race weekend itself.

Despite the visibility, the on-track action still proved exciting, with a number of crashes occurring across the weekend, most notably the Shootout collision as aforementioned, a qualifying crash for the Veloce team that left them unable to compete in the rest of the weekend, and a spectacular shunt for the unfortunate Claudia Hurtgen, who was unharmed after the front of the car dug into the desert and pitched into a multiple barrel roll spin.

Andretti driver Catie Munning also provided less costly entertainment, heroically wrestling her car round almost an entire lap despite a rear tyre puncture.

When the dust wasn’t in the way of the action, the shots captured by the cameras were exceptional, with all sorts of camera angles panning away from the drivers across the landscape, onboard shots encapsulating the challenges the drivers face in off-roading, and ground-level shots conveying the impressive raw speed of the cars.

There was considerable disparity in the pace of drivers, with the likes of Jenson Button struggling in unfamiliar surroundings, but this was inevitable and the pecking order is likely to change across the different surfaces. Having an F1 champion race rallying legends and drivers from a number of widely varying formats made up for the lack of close finishing.

The final was won by the Rosberg Team, with drivers Molly Taylor and Johann Kristoffersson utilising their off-road experience to dominate the field, ahead of the Andretti and X44 teams.

What does the Future Hold for Extreme E?

Extreme E is in simplest terms, an experiment, and so there were always going to be a number of teething issues in the first round.

The Desert posed a number of unique challenges to the races that won’t occur across the whole season - but each climate will present new problems for the organisers to tackle in order to ensure the racing format is entertaining enough to build a solid fanbase.

The area in which Extreme E has succeeded most so far is its promotion of sustainability, awareness of climate change and equality. It felt like everything had been well and truly thought out on this front - from broadcast messaging, the free-to-air coverage on the BBC and social media allowing promotion to a wider audience, to the trophies made from recycled materials and the sustainable travel model.

In order for Extreme E to ultimately achieve its goal to ‘reduce the overall climate impact from sports’, though, entertaining racing will be pivotal - especially with races only occurring every 2-3 months.

One uninteresting weekend risks losing any momentum the sport has with fans, in turn damaging the chances of raising widespread awareness of climate change and enacting positive action in wider sport for the better.