The traditional pre-season winter testing in Formula E took place on the Jarama road circuit this week and the field is as compact as ever with tiny gaps between the favorites.
The FIA Formula E World Championship will see its first round of season 11 (2024/2025) organized on December 7 in Sao Paulo, the same weekend as the Formula 1 finale in Abu Dhabi.
The dramatic events in Valencia had made the Ricardo Tormo circuit usually used for winter testing inaccessible and the FE promoter managed in record time to repatriate the equipment to the Jarama track, near Madrid.
Several technical developments to test
Staggered by one day, the tests totaled seven three-hour sessions, the last being reserved for female drivers, while a race simulation was organized (photo above) to put the new control systems to the test. the GEN3 Evo, including four-wheel drive and fast charging devices which could result in races with pit stops for this season 11.
As the sessions progressed, the times fell with a best time to the credit of Mitch Evans (Jaguar) ahead of the surprising Dan Ticktum (Kiro) and the reigning champion Pascal Wehrlein (Porsche). The second Kiro in the hands of David Beckmann, a Porsche protégé who provides the engines for the new American team (ex-ERT), is in fourth place in the hierarchy of the combined classification of the three days (see table below) ahead of the youngest on the board Taylor Barnard (McLaren).
The French in mixed tone
The first DS Penske, that of newcomer Maximilian Günther, just entered the top 10 behind Stoffel Vandoorne, his replacement at Maserati (another brand of the Stellantis group) while Jean-Eric Vergne could not do better than seventeenth, five places behind the other French representative on the grid Norman Nato (Nissan) seven tenths of the reference time, no less than fourteen drivers clocking in the same second!
The very small gaps between the leading teams portend great fights during the sixteen E-Prixes on the calendar, starting with that of Sao Paulo in a month. Note the return of the manufacturer Lola Cars which took over the franchise of the ABT team with a Yamaha engine for the veteran Lucas di Grassi and the beginner Zane Maloney.
The session reserved for women saw F1 Academy leader Abbi Pulling (Nissan) ahead of triple W-Series champion Jamie Chadwick (Jaguar) by three tenths with a time of 1'30″880, but unfortunately Frenchwoman Lilou Wadoux was unable to race due to a problem adapting to the cockpit of his car.
