Villeneuve concerned high development rate will hurt racing
- Aug 27, 2015
- 2 min read
Jacques Villeneuve expressed his concerns that the open regulations regarding gearboxes and powertrains for Formula E this year will be detrimental to the racing.
"Because there will be so much difference," he explained, "We’ll see in the first race what the real difference is. But looking at the test here there’s a gap, there’s quite a big gap between a few of the powertrains which, ultimately, won’t be good for the racing. It’s good for the technology, but it’s not good for the racing."
Other drivers are excited to see what the development of this technology does for the sport.
Dragon Racing driver Jerome D'Ambrosio said: "I think it’s great for the fans and hopefully there can be some difference in between the cars so people will go with different strategies, and so on. But hopefully not too much difference in terms of pure speed."
Mahindra's Nick Heidfeld said: "From a spectator’s point of view, from the technical side I think it’s cool to see many different approaches, seeing one gear, two gears, three gears. I’ll tell you after the first couple of races if I still like it."
"Well that’s the point of Formula E, really," said Formula E commentator Jack Nicholls, "Last year it was great and I think it helped to change the perception of electric vehicles because, before then, you kind of laughed at electric vehicles.
"But now we’ve changed the perceptions last year that, actually, you think of electric vehicles and you think of close racing on street circuits in Moscow or Miami. And that was great, but the main purpose of Formula E is to drive the development of electric vehicles forward. And we weren’t doing that last year, we were just getting up and running, getting going. But from now onwards, we are developing the future of electric vehicles, and that’s great and that’s what the championship’s here to do.
"And even the fact that we’ve gained over a second just by changing the electric motor and the transmission is really quite impressive, because these guys have still got the same power, it’s still the same amount of energy to use, but they’re making the cars go a second quicker.
"It’s like saying you’ve got two 300 hosepower engines, but yet one is a second quicker. That’s the impressive nature of it, because it’s so tight but they’re still managing to find the time."
The field does look as though it could become more spread out this year, as the cars are no longer identical. Indeed, testing seems to have shown Renault e.DAMS and ABT as the two strongest teams going into the 2015/16 season.
It is often difficult, however, to read much into testing times, as we do not fully understand the different programmes teams are running, and many days were affected by rain.
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