[Edd Beesley]

Coverage starts on ITV4 on Saturday at 8am. I'll be up and watching it live, I think this is going to be the start of something exciting! Who else will be watching?

 

[billysielu]

Yeah - time zone's a bit tricky, but I'll be up early.

 

[Mark J Constable]

I'll be watching, live if poss

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Definitely! Seems that qualifying isn't live though, as that would be about 5am? I'm assuming they'll do a quick summary of the 4 qualifying heats, and then the race live?

 

[Paul]

Really looking forward to this. I've seen some negative comments from some of my motoring friends (washed up/failed racers was one of them) but I hope that'll be turned around.

It's 50/50 in my view if this will turn into a victory or disaster in terms of EV public relations. I believe it will win out, but we'll see very soon!

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Generally the nay-sayers are people who'll nay-say about anything new, so don't take any notice. There is some incredible driving talent there and I'm really looking forward to seeing them get the best out of the cars!

 

[Edd Beesley]

There will be ridicule over the car swapping, and hopefully that will be killed off asap (although it will make for a funny talking point "look how far batteries have come! They used to have to SWAP CARS! lolololol!" in the future).

My only worry is a fire. Either from simply overloading the machines or from an accident. It is of course always a risk, and fires happen with road cars every single day but it would be terrible for it to happen, live, in race 1, of Formula E.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Fire is a real risk. It happens in F1 occasionally that the ERS (Energy Recovery System) catches fires but it probably happens less than other causes of fire.

 

[Richard Gledhill]

The car-swapping will be amusing and yes, it will be funny to look back in a few years' time (hopefully) and have a laugh

Fire is always a problem in motorsport, but remember that all non-electric sports cars are driving round with many tens of litres of extremely combustible fuel on board, so motorsport is very used to dealing with this sort of thing. I'm not aware of any fires in the testing they've done so far, so I think it will be ok - I'd hate to see one go up in smoke on Saturday.

Remember that road cars are hopeless compared to race cars in terms of being able to monitor themselves and shut themselves down, and the ones that catch fire are generally poorly and lazily maintained... (and French )

 

[PRO-AMPERA]

I will be watching

 

[rp689]

E-programme:
http://www.fiaformulae.com/officialprogrammes

 

[The Badger]

Looking forward to it....

BBC's article today! http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/motorsport/26482236

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Rather negative article, I think Let's at least give it chance! I must admit the fan-boost thing is stupid and needs to go, but the rest will be interesting...

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Looking at the timings, nothing is being shown live on British TV The qualifying is 5am and the race 9am, but the ITV4 coverage starts at 11am. Does anyone know if it will be streamed from anywhere?

 

[flipper]

Looking at the timings, nothing is being shown live on British TV The qualifying is 5am and the race 9am, but the ITV4 coverage starts at 11am. Does anyone know if it will be streamed from anywhere?

ITV4 coverage starts at 8am and is quoting "live"... not sure where you saw 11am!

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Wow... must admit it's a long time ago that I looked now, so my brain's obviously scrambled things! Thank you I shall be up for 8am then!

 

[Simon Mac]

I'll watch it, but probably not live. After all if I record it it's hardly likely anyone will tell me the result in casual conversation

I think the car swap will actually add something (after all it's little different to driver swaps at Le Mans).

The thing that really bugs me is the "fanboost".

For example, the Dragon team did seem a lot slower than the Virgin cars at Donington. If Dragon win, I'm worried it's the home advantage of Fanboost that has skewed the results.

Ultimately it's turning the skill of the team and drivers into a Kardashianesque popularity contest...

We will see.

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Just to follow up, apparently Lucas di Grassi didn't even use his Fan Boost because he was worried it would use up his battery life too quickly! Let's hope this daft idea gets consiged to the dustbin, along with double points for the last F1 race of the year...

 

[Edd Beesley]

Just to follow up, apparently Lucas di Grassi didn't even use his Fan Boost because he was worried it would use up his battery life too quickly! Let's hope this daft idea gets consiged to the dustbin, along with double points for the last F1 race of the year...

Or was he saving it for the last corner, and it just doesn't quite do what we thought....?

 

[Richard Gledhill]

Aha! I think you've sussed it! It's actually a James-Bond style rocket launcher to fire Heidfeld into the side of Prost!!