“The Saturday of a Formula E race is like a rollercoaster for emotions,” says Portuguese racing driver Antonio Felix da Costa. “It’s the moment that we worked for. This is where it counts: this is where we make points for the championship.”
Felix da Costa may be only 25 but he is a veteran racing driver. He has competed in both single-seaters and sports cars, with a CV spanning DTM, GP3, Formula Renault 3.5 and Blancpain, to name just a few series in which he has participated. He was a part of the prestigious Red Bull driver development programme. His contemporaries at various points have included Formula One aces Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo.
In short, this is a man who knows his way around a racing car and circuit, and who is well used to the difficulties of competition. So it may come as something of a surprise when the fresh-faced driver rates the relatively new FIA Formula E series as one of the toughest challenges he has ever faced.
“Formula E is really hard mentally, and physically,” says Felix da Costa. “Mentally, because we get everything done in one day here. Normally, in other race series, we’re used to spreading all this mental stress over the course of two or three days but here it’s all in one day.”
Here’s what happens in those 24 hours before a Formula E race.
24 hours to go. Formula E races are held mostly on temporary city centre street circuits. On Friday afternoon, teams and drivers are given a 30 minute shakedown session, which they use to evaluate the new track and to ensure their cars are set up correctly to maximise performance. Set up changes include mechanical adjustments, such as suspension settings and the toe and camber of the wheels, and powertrain tweaks, such as torque maps and the amount of energy returned under braking.
“We do three laps with each car, just to check if everything is okay,” confirms Felix da Costa. In Formula E, each driver uses two cars in the race with a swap between them around halfway through. This will change in the sport’s fifth season, when advancements in battery technology will mean just one car will be needed.
“So any updates, we need to try and see if they’re working,” the racer continues. “We’ve got everyone involved, make sure we know what’s going on with both cars.”
Fridays involve much more activity than simply shakedown however. Interviews, drivers’ briefings, engineering debriefs, media engagement, a team track walk and press conferences lead to hectic schedule: “We go to the drivers’ briefing. We get to see each other for the first time, all the drivers. We have a lot of respect for each other, so it’s cool to have a chat with these guys. There’s a lot of media stuff going on. We get asked about new bits to the track, new bits to the cars, updates, different driver line ups, drivers coming in, drivers going out.”
The drivers usually like to leave the track before 6pm on Friday. Some media engagements may be scheduled for that evening, such as sponsor dinners or press events, but these are planned in such a way that the Formula E drivers can get an early night, ahead of the busy day to follow.
10 hours to go. “The most painful part comes, when the alarm comes on, on the Saturday morning, because it’s really, really early,” says Felix da Costa. He’s not joking. The alarm is set for 6am on race day.
In a conventional racing series, Saturday would simply be focused on qualifying. Not so in Formula E. There is so much to fit in before the race starts at 4pm, including two practice sessions, qualifying, more media commitments and fan activity such as the autograph session.
8 hours to go. After breakfast, Felix da Costa heads to the race track to prepare for the first practice session.
“I make sure I get a good warm-up. I skip the rope a little bit, get a little a bit of sweat going on before I have to drive the car very early in the morning,” he says. “This is where the real work begins. We know it’s on, when we jump in the car, for free practice one.”
The first free practice session is 45 minutes long and begins at 8am. Most teams will use this to simulate race-pace runs. In Formula E, the cars have a 200kW power limit which they may use in qualifying, but this is turned down to 170kW during the race.
Drivers must learn the race track, which might be absolutely new (such as the tracks in Hong Kong, New York and Montreal in the 2016-17 season), while teams must work out the most efficient way of getting around the circuit without losing track position – it’s no good qualifying first if the driver makes inefficient use of the available battery energy during the race itself.
“There’s a lot of things, as race drivers, that we need to prepare ourselves for,” confirms Felix da Costa. “But the team also needs a lot of data to be gathered for them to do their job and give us a good race car. We cross over all the information gathered and we make sure we put the best of what I found in the cars, for free practice two.”
After free practice one is complete and the drivers have discussed performance with their engineers, the qualifying lottery takes place. This is held in the fan zone, called the eVillage, in full view of fans, and determines the order in which the drivers will take to the track for qualifying.
5 hours 30 minutes to go. At 10.30am, the second practice session gets under way. This one is just 30 minutes long, and is frequently used by drivers to turn their cars up to 200kW and try some qualifying practice laps. If the first session has been disrupted by crashes, teams will be scrambling to maximise their data gathering in this session.
“In free practice two, we usually tend to focus a lot more for the drivers, to get in the zone, understand how late we can break, how much speed we can carry through these corners, how much curb we can hit here and there to get ourselves ready for qualifying,” explains Felix da Costa.
Once 11am arrives, that’s it for practice at this circuit. Other race series will spread practice sessions out over two or three days: in Formula E, it’s all over within three hours on Saturday.
4 hours to go. Qualifying begins at 12pm. Drivers take to the track in four groups of five drivers; each group has just six minutes on track to attempt to set a fast time. With a lap being around a minute in length, and the powertrains needing time between each fast lap to cool down, drivers often have just two attempts at a full pace lap before time runs out.
“Normally, the track evolution is pretty big, because we race in the cities, and it’s very dirty in the morning and then the track just keeps getting better,” says Felix da Costa. “If you’re in group four you probably get a bit of a cleaner racetrack, therefore a bit more grip. If you’re in group one there’s no reference, there’s no benchmark, so you’ve just got to go out there and drive your best lap possible. If you’re in Group Four, you might not have to drive to the limit so much, because you know this lap time will be enough to bring you into Super Pole.”
After the groups have all finished, the five fastest drivers then line up for the Super Pole session. Here, they take to the track in reverse order – the slowest of the five out first, the fastest out last. They have just one full power lap to determine where in that top five they will start on the grid.
“I think the most exciting moment of these 24 hours is really qualifying,” observes Felix da Costa. “It is a really hard mental challenge because qualifying basically, you drive out the pits, you have a warm up lap, and then you have only one lap in your full power mode. So normally I tend to drive between 95 and 99% of my abilities because if you make a mistake, that’s it, you will have to start at the back of the grid.”
With just three hours to go before the race, drivers have completed practice, qualifying and the Super Pole shootout. But there is no rest for these racers: next up is fan engagement.
2 hours 15 minutes to go. “Between sessions, we have an eRace here in the middle of the paddock, where all the fans can come and watch and we do a simulator race,” says Felix da Costa. This simulator race pits some of the racing drivers against each other in an open-air arena where fans can see the action on big screens and see how their favourite drivers react. It’s often a chance for the drivers to unwind, pulling out fantastically risky manoeuvres that they would not dream of attempting on the real track.
“That’s really cool because all the fans are there and they’re cheering for us,” the Portuguese driver goes on. “Formula E is really pushing boundaries on how we can get the fans closer to the race drivers and that gives us a lot of enjoyment as well.”
An autograph session follows the eRace, with queues often stretching out of sight. Finally, the drivers then have some time to relax, to make sure they are properly hydrated and to have last minute conversations with their engineers.
56 minutes to go. The final run down to the race starts now, with less than an hour to go until the race begins. The drivers take to the track for a drivers’ parade, so that the fans sitting in the grandstands all around the circuit can show their support before the main event.
“Before the race, all the drivers join the drivers’ parade, so we all jump into this electric truck and we see all the fans around, in all the grandstands,” says Felix da Costa. “But then, as soon as this is over we have two minutes to jump in the cars and drive the cars to the grid.”
In other series, the cars will do a formation lap before settling into their grid positions for the race start. But in Formula E, preserving battery energy is critical so this is discarded. Instead, the drivers line up two grid spots behind where they will actually start. Once the grid clears of the throngs of engineers, team management, celebrities and media, the drivers do a drag racing-style burnout to their final grid position to warm up their tyres.
10 seconds to go. “Once we’re here on the grid, there is where you really feel the pressure,” Felix da Costa recounts. There are no noisy internal combustion engines thrumming along at idle, no vibrations in the cockpit, no impatient revving by the drivers. Instead, the electric cars sit silent and ready, and it is so quiet in the cockpit that the drivers can hear their own heart beating.
“You can feel the tension in everyone around you, your team, the other guys’ teams, the other drivers,” says Felix da Costa. After 24 hours of relentless activity and a particularly condensed schedule on race day itself, here is the defining moment. The drivers are in control. There is very little telemetry permitted, so the driver really is alone on the race track, one with his machine. All the build up, all of the activity, leads to this point, to a final 50 minute burst once the starting lights go out and the race gets underway. That knowledge builds the anticipation, the adrenaline, the nerves.
“This is where it counts,” Felix da Costa sums up simply. “This is where we make points for the championship: the race.”