ABB FIA Formula E Championship team NIO has announced Chinese driver Ma Qing Hua will continue as the squad’s official reserve driver for Season 5. The 30-year-old from Shanghai will again be an integral part of NIO throughout the current campaign, which began in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, 15 December 2018.
Jamie Chadwick, the only female driver to win a British Formula 3 Championship race, will make a high-profile test debut with ABB FIA Formula E Championship team NIO in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday 16 December – the day after the opening e-Prix of Season 5. NIO said that it is determined to help provide key opportunities on the international stage for the best young female racing talent, confirming 20-year-old Chadwick for the six-hour test at the Ad Diriyah Street Circuit. The British Racing Drivers’ Club (BRDC) ‘Rising Star’, from Tetbury in Gloucestershire, will pilot the NIO 004 chassis.
The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London played host recently to the glittering official launch of the NIO team’s 2018/2019 ABB FIA Formula E Championship programme, where the squad revealed a new driver line-up for Season 5, a new official partner and, of course, a brand new car.
The new-generation Michelin Pilot Sport tyre set to debut in the 2018/19 Formula E season will be lighter, more energy efficient and bear an even closer resemblance to road tyres than the first-generation Michelin tyre. Its introduction accompanies changes to vehicle technical specifications that come into effect at the start of the all-electric racing series’ fifth season.
Three seasons of exclusive tyre supply to the FIA Formula E Championship are already under Michelin’s belt and a fourth begins tomorrow. We can look forward to at least four more years of Michelin supply to the electric race series as well; the tyre maker and the FIA have announced an extension of the supply agreement up to the end of the 2020/21 season. Furthermore, while the Pilot Sport EV2 tyre launched at the start of season three returns for 2017/18, the French manufacturer confirms it is already working on tyres for the new-look next generation car, which will make its debut a year from now in season five.
Team ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport’s Lucas di Grassi is the new Formula E Champion after securing a comfortable points’ finish in the season finale at the Hydro-Quebec Montreal ePrix.
Roborace has named Michelin as its official tyre partner. Michelin has been working secretly at its testing facilities and sharing over 125 years of its expertise with Roborace to develop an exclusive solution for the ultimate ‘Robocar’, designed by Daniel Simon, which will feature next-generation Michelin road tyres to be used in the series. Roborace is currently in its Beta season appearing at Formula E circuits for exhibitions using its development car ‘DevBot’. The official unveiling of the championship’s Ultimate car will take place in 2017.
The mission of the FIA Formula E championship is to drive technology from the racetrack to the road, and this means we should be interested in how the second generation of Michelin’s Formula E race tyre performs. The new Pilot Sport EV2’s competitive debut took place at the Hong Kong ePrix on the weekend, allowing us to finally see what Michelin’s claimed “two steps” forward” in development means in terms of performance. Pascal Couasnon, director of Michelin Motorsport, is proud of the evolutionary development present in the second-generation tyre.
For the third season of Formula E, Michelin – the series’ tyre partner since its September 2014 inception – will provide a second generation of the Pilot Sport EV tyre. Like the original Pilot Sport EV, whose specifications were inspired by similarities with road tyres, Michelin will see the new version as an opportunity to develop technologies applicable to its consumer product range.
Launched in September 2014, the inaugural FIA Formula E Championship an on 18-inch, patterned Michelin Pilot Sport EV tyres. Work on developing new tyres for the second Formula E season had already begun when the FIA asked Michelin to continue with the same-spec tyre for the season in order to enable teams use a known tyre when developing their cars to meet new, less restrictive technical regulations. Work on the second-generation tyre nevertheless continued, and Michelin Motorsport says this means “two steps forward will have been taken” in regards to tyre development when its new tyre finally debuts at the start of the third Formula E season.
The Mexico City ePrix saw the Michelin Pilot Sport EV face a very different challenge of competing around a permanent circuit, instead of at a temporary city-centre facility, as has been the case since the inaugural Formula E race in Beijing, in September 2014.
Previous venues have ranged from street tracks to public parks (as in London) and airfield runways (Berlin), but Mexico City chose the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and in the infield of a baseball stadium to stage its round of the FIA Formula E Championship.
Michelin gives word that its fourth-generation Pilot Sport is being released in Europe as of this month. The initial launch range includes 17 tyres for 17 and 18-inch rims, with 19-inch fitments being introduced later this year and in 2017.
UK high-specification brakes and clutch manufacturer Alcon has experienced a successful 2015 motorsport season to go alongside its significant supply deals with Peugeot and Supacat among others. In late November, Kyle Busch claiming victory in the Nascar Sprint Cup race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, and with it becoming the 2015 champion. Busch brought his Alcon-equipped, Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) Toyota home 1.5 seconds ahead of his nearest rival, to crown yet another successful year for the Tamworth-based manufacturer.
Formula E has entered into a joint partnership with leading immersive technology developers 360 Racing to continue to support 360° video for the championship. This 360° video will provide fans with an immersive 360 degree look into the new groundbreaking motorsport series from the drivers’ perspective. You can see an example of the technology in the full article.
Michelin’s Pilot Sport EV has helped Formula E to overcome difficult weather conditions in Putrajaya, Malaysia, despite temperatures in excess of 30°C, a track temperature of almost 50°C and humidity levels of between 60 and 90 per cent. Round 2 of the 2015/2016 Formula E ePrix featured the same format as 2014, with a 12-turn, 2.5km track and the start brought forward by two hours to 2:04pm local time in order to minimise the threat of wet weather. Torrential rain swept over the city an hour after the chequered flag was shown. The hot, damp conditions made the day hard not only for the drivers, but also for the battery of their all-electric single-seater racing cars.
