Start, Formula E, Diriyah, 2019

FIA grants world championship status to Formula E

Formula E

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The FIA has officially granted world championship status to Formula E, five years after the all-electric single-seater championship was inaugurated.

Formula E will be officially recognised as a world championship as of the 2020-21 season.

“The creation and development of Formula E [has] been a great adventure,” said FIA president Jean Todt. “I am proud that today we confirm its FIA world championship status.

“Since we started this journey, Formula E has undoubtedly gone from strength to strength. Within a short timeframe, the series has proven itself relevant for the automotive industry with two more major car manufacturers having joined the series at the start of the current season.”

Mercedes and Porsche entered the championship for this first time this year, joining Audi, DS, Jaguar, Nissan, BMW, NIO, Penske and Mahindra.

“The commitment and professionalism of those manufacturers and their respective teams is mirrored in the quality of the driver roster which has improved with every season,” said Todt.

“Since its first race in Beijing in 2014 and with every EPrix thereafter, Formula E has proven that the concept of cutting-edge electric racing works. I wholeheartedly welcome Formula E as the latest FIA world championship.”

Nelson Piquet Jnr was crowned the first Formula E champion in 2015. Sebastien Buemi, Lucas di Grassi and Jean-Eric Vergne won the next three seasons, and Vergne became the series’ first two-times champion last year.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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25 comments on “FIA grants world championship status to Formula E”

  1. Since its first race in Beijing in 2014 and with every EPrix thereafter, Formula E has proven that the concept of cutting-edge electric racing works.

    Mmm… in my view it doesn’t work.
    It works as a fake chewing-gum show, but not as a real racing series.

    If they want to say – that this is the future of all racing series, then – thank you very much, I will not be following any of them. I will find better ways to destroy my brain.

    1. How is it not ‘a real racing series’? I always quite enjoy it as the racing is generally close and unpredictable (though wouldn’t miss some of the overly narrow tracks)

      1. At first these people say FE is like A1GP, won’t make it into a 2nd or 3rd year, and they were wrong. Then they say it wouldn’t get any manufactures interested, then FE gradually has more manufactures than any WC status series. Now they are only resorted to saying “it’s not a real racing, because their brain can’t handle it.” Haters are gonna hate, but FE is only going to be the future. (The only exception is another alternative source of energy is found)

  2. What are the criteria for being recognized as a World Championship?

    1. The criteria is that FIA feels it right to call it that. It’s just a name, really, but one the FIA only dishes out to what they consider the premier racing series in its category (FE being officially recognised as the premier electric racing series then).

      Today, there are quite many. There’s F1 obviously, now FE, WRC, World Rallycross Championship (WRX), and the WEC.

    2. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
      3rd December 2019, 13:13

      I think they’ll have to get rid of fan-boost (maybe they have already?)

    3. A portuguese news outlet says that in order to be elegible to be classified as a “World Championship”, FE needed to have associated with 4 car brands and have races in at least three continents. It also says that these requirements had been met a while ago, but the status hadn’t been granted yet in order to avoid an increase in the entry costs.

      https://www.autosport.pt/velocidade/formula-e/formula-e-competicao-electrica-ganha-estatuto-de-campeonato-do-mundo-em-2020-2021/

    4. I was under the impression that the manufacturers also needed to make their own car. Not only the power train. All other world championships have manufacturers that build their own car (and some have also customers that buy these cars).

      The WTCR lost their championship status because the TCR rules do not allow manufacturer teams, only customer teams.

    5. Does anyone know what, apart from “status”, is gained by it being a World Championship?

  3. Doesn’t really matter what Liberty or any of the teams think when the FIA themselves say that racing electric cars is such a worthy pursuit.

    If I had money I’d still bet on there being a merger some day down the line. Two open wheel high performance circuit racing world championships doesn’t really make sense when considering the other world championships are for very different disciplines (rally, rallycross and endurance.)

    1. If you take a look at the picture illustrating this story you ought to be able to figure out the problem with your last sentence. Presumably you meant open cockpit racing world championships? A nice dividing line would be that F1 is an open wheel championship for hybrid petrol engines on purpose-built circuits while FE is a closed wheel championship for electric engines on street circuits. Sadly I don’t see F1 abandoning Monaco (or even Baku, really) in the near future…

  4. Martin Elliott
    3rd December 2019, 12:57

    Another marketing gimmick backed by the marketing, not technical ‘Manufacturers’ department. In open wheel racing, with all the lower Formulas also using Spec cars, that’s the only place where there is relevancy.
    Electrical technological is extremely advanced already due to over a century of continuous development in static as well as mobile situations.
    So yes, its a championship with (mainly poor) venues and drivers and staff globally represented, but its not elite series like F1 or WEC.

  5. I do like EV’s and will likely buy one as my next car. However, Formula E is such a joke of a championship. I wish that FIA would let FE be, and make a proper World Championship for electric racing.

  6. Wow only negative comments. I agree with Jack Nicholls: ok boomer.
    Seriously though, worse drivers have become champions in WEC. The series itself definitely isn’t perfect, but neither are any of the ‘world championship’ series. The drivers in FE are of a very high calibre, probably the highest outside of F1, I’d rate it just higher than Indycar tbh, so yeah, this is fine by me. I think at the end of the day it won’t make any difference, people will either like it or hate it regardless of whether or not it’s a world championship.

    1. @hugh11, to be fair, I would say that there are some aspects of Formula E where I can understand the criticisms.

      Fan Boost is often complained about, but it is worth noting that there have been those within Formula E who have raised concerns in the past about the potential for abusing the Fan Boost initiative to cheat – there have been questions over suspicious voting patterns in the past and potential attempts to rig the system to favour particular drivers, which raised issues about the integrity of the sport and how they addressed those efforts.

      The decision to race on tight street courses is a conscious decision by the organisers, and whilst some can argue about the merits of such decisions, one criticism that has come up, which I think is a fair one, is the risk of track blockages and the potential safety ramifications of that.

      Certainly, there are those who feel that the tight circuit layouts are responsible for a high level of collisions between cars, with some cynically suggesting that it might even be a deliberate intention to create circuits which encourage crashes. At the very least, there have been multiple incidents where races have had to be stopped because the track has been easily blocked by a crashed car, and a few instances where that has caused a major pile up.

      More worrying is the incident in the recent race in Diriyah, where the race was restarted whilst a recovery vehicle was still on the track. In that instance, the design of the circuit seems to have been a direct contributing factor – the access routes had to be made so narrow that the tractor being used ended up stuck on track because the access route it needed to use ended up being blocked.

      In that instance, if the design of the circuit is causing problems for the marshals when recovering a car, that is, quite frankly, negligent – it’s one thing to have a layout that might not produce good quality racing, but another thing entirely when it risks making things more dangerous for track workers.

  7. In practical terms I don’t think it means much more than a spot under the ‘World Championships’ header on the FIA website, but it’s still a small positive step.

  8. I’ve said this before but Formula E frustrates me because it’s a series I really want to like & while I am interested in the tech side I always get put off by the more gimmicky things, The awful circuits, how much contact there often is & to an extent the spec nature of the chassis.

    If Formula E did away with the fan boost/attack zone gimmicks, Raced on better circuits, Clamped down on contact & allowed a bit more freedom in the chassis (Think something like CART from 20 years ago) then it would be something I would really get into. But as it is it’s something I went into excited about but found myself losing interest in as it went on primarily for the reasons I bring up.

    I just see the Fan Boost/Attack Zone gimmicks as been completely unnecessary. I know the argument for the attack zones tends to be that they recreate the strategy that was lost now that they don’t need pit stops, But I think that’s a bad argument because the cars can run close, race & overtake so I think the racing is perfectly fine (And even more enjoyably) without pit stops or some artificial gimmick trying to recreate them in some way.

    1. it’s a series I really want to like & while I am interested in the tech side I always get put off by the more gimmicky things, The awful circuits

      @stefmeister – you’ve echoed my thoughts to a T.

  9. I am a racing fan – my soul will always be with F1 no matter how it changes as that was how I got into racing, but as far as I am concerned – if it has wheels and races I will watch it (2 or 4 . . . or more).

    There is no problem with declaring this as a “world Championship” – maybe it will get more coverage, maybe we will see drivers going from Fe to F1 (or other formulae) as well as the other way around. Maybe with increased coverage we will see increased acceptance of Electric vehicles (I drive a Jag so they will really need to impress me), I see this as a positive move for auto racing in general and the EV niche in particular and welcome it wholeheartedly.

  10. I think at the moment FE’s greatest strengths are also some of it’s biggest weaknesses.
    Electric power may be an essential future tech, but some fans prefer more flames and noise.
    Street circuits can bring new fans but speed and design options will be more limited. Imagine F1 racing purely on street circuits.
    Fan boost is a way to engage the audience, but is derided as a needless cheaty gimmick. Like DRS.
    As the power trains improve and pressure on “dirty” fuel use increases we may see convergence between the two. But at the moment it’s like a marathon vs speed-walking. At a glance, neither looks quite like flat out racing, even though they are trying hard to win.

    1. Fan boost is a way to engage the audience, but is derided as a needless cheaty gimmick. Like DRS.

      DRS is not needless, it is there be cause dirty air really makes it hard to keep up due to huge loss in down force and grip. If you can get close enough to the car infront with all those issues, then you deserve to go through anyways.

      If we are going to call DRS cheaty, then we should also say the same thing about aero too cos it forces your chasers back, like the classic Enzo quote “Aero is for people who cannot build engines”.

  11. ‘World Championship Edition’ will simply look better (and sell more copies) on the video game box.

  12. About time, really. It’s a championship taking place all over the world, involving manufacturers and drivers from all over the world. That for me is already World Championship status. Like WRC or WEC.

    It doesn’t mean anything anyway, but it deserves that title, regardless of our views towards the series, the cars, the drivers, the tracks, the show.

  13. I feel it will only be considered a true world championship when junior drivers aspire to win it. The way I see it is a bunch of drivers that aspired to make it big in Formula One but didn’t quite get there.

  14. …or into IndyCar.

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