Drivers, start your engines: Cape Town to feel the need for e-speed

Breaking barriers is wildly satisfying and the extraordinary popularity of horse racing, car racing and even just human racing, testifies to how mesmerising speed remains.

There is a tendency among the more genteel among us to deride the above-mentioned masculine proclivity for this obsession with speed, and make unpleasant remarks about the size of certain parts of the human anatomy in this respect. But, you know, we just don’t care. And anyway, plenty — and I mean plenty — of humans of the female proclivity love speed too.

A long time ago, a car retailer in Joburg lent me a convertible Porsche for the weekend as part of a press promotion. When it came to actually handing over the keys, I could see he was having serious second thoughts, so I just wrenched them out of his hands.

I thought I would be reviled by ordinary car drivers. But everyone, from my friends, to the petrol station attendants to other drivers, were nothing other than full of awe. People say they hate sports-car drivers, and perhaps they do, but when it comes down to it, they can’t help but be impressed.

Anyway, late on Wednesday night, the FIA World Motor Sport Council announced that Cape Town will be part of the Formula E series, joining at least 10 other cities around the world in a 17-race series. I, for one, can’t be more thrilled.

This race will be fun for all kinds of reasons: it’s the first time that SA will host an open-wheel racing series in 30 years; it’s some compensation for not winning an F1 at Kyalami, and the organisers are really doing a fabulous job of wrapping the race into a much broader environmental effort.

So how does Formula E compare with the world’s greatest motor racing series, Formula 1? You may be surprised — they are not that far apart.

F1 has a much higher top speed and cars reaching 360km/h on the track are not unusual. That is really, really fast by the way. Lewis Hamilton reached an average speed of 264km/h at Monza, otherwise known as the “Cathedral of Speed” in 2020 during qualifying.

Interestingly, the fastest top speeds are recorded by Indy cars in the US at around 380km/h.

Last season, the fastest speeds of Formula E were around 280km/h, and the cars had about 250kW of power. But this year, the FIA is introducing the Gen3 car, which is a huge step up from the previous version. They will reach 320km/h pretty regularly, and there is a good chance we will see some of those speeds in Cape Town because the track laid out around Cape Town Stadium is one of the fastest of the series.

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But of course, Formula E cars are really designed for street racing as opposed to track racing, partly because they don’t make the terrible racket that F1 cars make. (Pause for inevitable arguments about the term “terrible racket”).

The big advantage electric cars have is in acceleration, and even the Gen2 matched pretty closely the 0-60 of F1 cars. The Gen3 cars will be faster off the line than F1 cars, but then again, so are the high-end Teslas.

The force behind this whole effort is Iain Banner, who has a long history in finance, sports management, tech and real estate. Banner has designed a big environmental festival around the event, including a conference, an electric mobility cross-country, and a green economy summit. He really is unstoppable; he’s thinking about a decade-long commitment to this race.

Banner is not disclosing the cost of bringing the race to Cape Town, but both the city and the province are making contributions. Now that it’s certain, Banner wants to bring in the national government too. The race will probably have seating for around 35,000 people and tickets will range from pretty pricey, around R2,000, to fairly cheap, around R200.

The global viewership of Formula E is improving nicely, but it’s naturally way off F1 and there has been a two-year layoff before the current season.

But once again, you may be surprised: The Formula E race in Indonesia this year was viewed by about 28 million people. That compares to an average F1 viewership of about 70 million.

The interesting question is how this unfolds down the line. F1 cars already have electric boosters. But the question is how much of an anomaly will petrol racing cars be in an environment where most new cars being sold are electric? It’s not impossible they will merge, but I suspect F1 will go down that route kicking and screaming.

But it’s interesting that the big car companies are supporting Formula E, including Jaguar, Mahindra, Maserati, Nissan and Porsche. Oddly, Mercedes dropped out after winning the series last year.

In any event, it will be fun to watch the race and the whole environmental fandango in February next year. BM/DM