Bold New Era In Motorports Dawns With Extreme E Series
By Susan Wade
When Riverside, Calif., native Sara Price took to the Desert X Prix course this past week for a shakedown run in Chip Ganassi Racing’s GM Hummer EV, the Extreme E Series came to life.
It’s what founder and CEO Alejandro Agag called “the biggest experiment ever seen in motorsport,” this intercontinental enterprise to entwine a research-and-development showcase for all-electric SUVs with climate-change awareness. A fascinating fabric woven with technology, science, entertainment, and the art of driving, Extreme E shows off that golden thread of save-the-planet evangelism. And it’s under way in Al’Ula, a hauntingly beautiful desertscape in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
Price, 28, a professional stunt driver on motorcycles and in cars for television and film productions, is a veteran motocross, rally, X Games, and Stadium Super Trucks veteran. But this distinction is exceptional for her, she said. “I’m so honored to be here. In the world of off-road racing, you have no idea how big this is. It’s pretty incredible to have the whole of our industry watching us. It’s already been such a journey and an adventure. I’m very grateful and glad to be a part of something that means so much.”
In an effort to reduce motorsport’s carbon footprint and promote environmental responsibility with sustainable and thoughtful consumption of food, water, and packaging, Extreme E has paid attention to details.
With Extreme E, even the bespoke trophies are “eco-P.C.” Uruguayan designer Mariano Pineynia won a contest against more than 100 other entrants from 31 nations. Using the shape of the Extreme E logo as its basic shape, Pineynia fashioned each of the five Prix trophies to reflect a different material specific to that course environment.
One of the series’ proudest departures from tradition is the grand and historic ship St. Helena, the “floating centerpiece.” A storied former Royal Mail Ship that navigated the globe on behalf of Britain, has been refitted at great expense. Today it’s Extreme E’s freight and logistics hub. It hauls the championship’s cars, houses all the personnel in its 62 cabins, and provides space for race control and the science lab that replaced its original 20-square-meter swimming pool.
(Series race director Elkins conceded that Extreme E’s plan isn’t at net-zero emissions yet because participants still have to travel by traditional means to reach the ship. However, the bigger point, he said, is “that we’re not flying a bunch of cargo around the world.”)
Elkins (well-educated in the industry with Formula 1/2/3, Formula E, IMSA, CART, and NASCAR experience) said, “It’s about walking the walk, not just talking the talk.”
Second-generation Formula 1 star Nico Rosberg, the retired 2016 world driving champion and owner of the Extreme E team that features Swede Johan Kristoffersson and Australian Molly Taylor, proved Elkins’ point before any of the race cars started. “To combine my passion for racing and sustainability in the same project is awesome,” Rosberg, 35, said. “We’ve been out this week, helping turtles and removing plastic from the beach, and of course that’s not big impact on its own. But what we want to do is raise awareness of the problems the world is facing and show that we care. Since my F1 career ended, I’ve been focused on sustainability. And when Alejandro Agag called me and told me about Extreme E, for me it was the perfect match.”
Extreme E Chief Marketing Officer Ali Russell said the ship provides “the opportunity to conduct research into various areas of the marine environment during the global voyage in its onboard science laboratory, which will be home to a number of scientists during its year-long voyage.”
South Africa native Richard Washington is a professor of climate science at the U.K.’s renowned University of Oxford and will be front and center as the scientific team’s desert expert this weekend. He called Extreme E “a masterstroke to combine these concepts and goals with sport. It makes issues relatable for people. If I were to stand up and talk about convection in the Congo Basin, I don’t suppose too any people would tune in to listen, but if you do it through a different angle, you might just get that audience. What we’ve discovered with climate and climate change is that we need all the help we can get, and this is a wonderful combination.”
World Rallycross icon Carlos Sainz, who drives for the team he established with purpose-driven Madrid-based company Acciona, sponsor of the first team to complete the Dakar Rally with a 100-percent electric vehicle (in 2017). And Sainz, a 59-year-old Spaniard, said he has soaked in all the information he can from the scientists in this joint project.
“I’m happy to be here and trying this new way of motorsport. It’s a great opportunity. It was really interesting to spend time with the scientists on the ship, helping us to better understand what is going on in the world with global warming, CO2and the coral reefs,” he said. “When somebody explains it to you with the clarity that they did, it’s clear we need to do something and the message that comes out from this championship needs to be strong.”
The message of climate change’s impact on the Earth certainly is one the series wants to promote with its visits later this year to Lac Rose (Senegal), Kangerlussuaq (Greenland), Pará (Brazil), and Tierra Del Fuego (Argentina). And the unique pairing of one man and one woman behind the wheel, splitting the two-lap driving assignments equally. That policy offers a system for gender equality that might not work in all auto-racing situations – or, in the case of NHRA drag racing, not be necessary.
But one lesson that needs not to get lost in the eco-rescue effort is the performance of these all-electric SUVs. After all, with the very selection of SUVs, Agag was being a bit of a scold. The irony is that while SUVs are the most popular vehicles, they also are the most pollutant. So Agag and his collaborators are trying to show that consumers can have their automobiles and SUVs and still respect the environment. This is the living laboratory for what Extreme E and its participants hope will be the inspiration for a radical new generation of production vehicles.
Perhaps the most striking difference is that these cars are far quieter, although Elkins insisted, “They do make a sound. They make a very distinct sound.
“It sounds stupid, and I’m probably going to sound like a California hippie . . . the sounds actually exist – you just don’t hear them over the engine noise. When the engine noise goes away, all of a sudden you hear a car braking. During a practice session, I can hear a driver applying a set of brakes,” he said in a casual chat recently with his International Council of Motorsport Sciences colleagues. “And contact between two cars is like the most violent thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life, because [traditionally], so much of the sound is being drowned out by the engine. The sound of carbon and metal hitting each other . . . is like a car crash happened outside your window. It’s just amazing. All of the things you hear are things that happen all the time but you’d never realize are there. It’s just a different experience. It brings a whole new level of experience to the event.”
Instead of the low-flying-airplane buzz of today’s next-gen NASCAR stocker or that exhilarating whine of an IndyCar or that ear-splitting cackle of an NHRA Top Fuel dragster, the sound of the Odyssey 21 is like a whisper. It is to all of motorsports today what Parnelli Jones’ STP-Paxton turbine-powered champ car – the “Whooshmobile” – was in 1967, compared to the rest of his Indianapolis 500 rivals’ entries. (Agag and the entire series, though, are hoping for more staying power for Odyssey than Andy Granatelli’s STP car had on the open-wheel scene.)
The electric Odyssey 21 operates on a battery from Williams Advanced Engineering that produces a maximum output of 400 kWh of usable energy (equivalent to 550bhp). Extreme E’s world-first alliance with AFC Energy allows teams to charge those batteries using hydrogen fuel-cell technology using zero-emission energy.
The cars are of a singular design and outfitted identically with parts manufactured by Spark Racing Technology in France and encased in a body of made from natural flax fibers from the Swiss company Bcomp. The chassis is a niobium-reinforced steel alloy tubular frame. These are the pioneers of progress, the cars that can show automakers worldwide what’s possible in EV technology on the consumer side of the equation. They’re proof where the specially designed Continental Tire rubber meets the road – or, in this case, the sand, ice, rocks, and otherwise risky terrain.
Continental has produced an Extreme E-specific tread for durability. Furthermore, it has crafted a monitoring device that collects, measures, and analyzes such aspects as tire pressure and temperature in real time and transmits that information to a cockpit display. Each team is allocated one set of tires per race and is permitted two used tires from the previous race.
“We’re using the exact same vehicles the teams are racing as our medical car,” Elkins said. “So the medical team has the ability to access any kind of incident that occurs.” That, too, might be a first in the history of motorsport. So might Extreme E’s no-spectator policy, planned long before the pandemic barged in. Series organizers have concluded that “depending on the type and location of events, fans can represent 20-50 percent of the total footprint of the event, once you consider their transport, food and beverage, and merchandising.” So Extreme E deliberately wants no spectators at races “in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint.”
Journalists, videographers, and broadcasters are kept at bay for the same reason. Instead, remote coverage will employ four drones, in-car cameras, and advanced technology to send footage back to one of its London offices which has become a centralized “UHD-ready” broadcast and media center. Russell said, “As well as the live racing, we are producing behind-the-scenes programming which delves deeper into the championship and its wider purposes concerning electrification, environment, and equality.”
The remoteness of the race locations fit perfectly with Extreme E’s plans. It’s also ideal right now because so many racetracks around the world are struggling with limited crowds in order to follow thoughtful public-health practices as coronavirus lingers.
The backdrop for these limit-defying all-electric SUVs will be some of the most remote, most damaged ecosystems on Earth, to raise awareness of climate-change challenges – all while showcasing the performance capabilities of the vehicles in extreme conditions.
The key environmental challenge in Al-’Ula is water availability that is projected to decrease by 10-30 percent. That potentially will affect 2.4 billion people and displace as many as 700 million, triggering a massive migration of climate refugees. The terrain is dotted with dramatic rock formations for a beauty that contradicts the harsh land that has experienced more water evaporation than rainstorms can replenish. Still, the region has the chance to restore its biologically rich ecosystem. It once supported an acacia woodlands and was home to the ibex, red-necked ostrich, gazelles, and even the Arabian leopard. Native grasses, herbs, and other flora will be re-introduced. But the problems there are frequent and longer droughts, along with such detrimental human practices as overgrazing (particularly by camels), harmful agriculture procedures, and unsustainable water use. Comparatively, temperatures for this weekend’s Desert X Prix are expected to be more tolerable than the average continuous 100-degree-plus thermometer readings from late May through mid-September.
Unlike Al-’Ula, Lac Rose, Senegal, doesn’t have a water shortage. It’s the opposite. Rising sea levels and erosion pose the biggest threats. For Extreme E’s vehicles, the biggest threats along Africa’s Atlantic coast May 29-30 will be sand bars, salt beds, rocks, gravel, and bumpy land on the series’ lone oceanfront course. At risk environmentally in Senegal are coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrasses (erosion); crucial fish stocks (food scarcity); and oil spills, agrochemicals, and plastics (food-chain and ocean-ecosystem contamination).
In Greenland, arctic warming is bringing along with it accelerated melting of the ice cap, rising sea levels, and endangerment of the polar bear and ringed seal. Sea ice (which scientists have determined is dwindling rapidly) reflects the sun’s rays. So warmer oceans can compound the environmental and social situations globally. Extreme E teams will race Aug. 28-29 on the receding Russell Glacier, which is part of a UNESCO Heritage site.
The scene will be wildly different when Extreme E arrives in Pará, Brazil, for the Oct. 23-24 event. Tropical rainforests and lush settings surround this course, but racers will the region of this Brazilian state that has been damaged from forest fire and drought, significant results of agriculture, cattle grazing, timber-harvesting, and development.
Picture-postcard Patagonian panoramas of Argentina’s Tierra Del Fuego – site of the season finale Dec. 11-12 – belie the consequences of glacier recession, ice-cap thinning, and ice-sheet melting. The series has chosen a remote circuit in one of the Earth’s last frontiers, near the town of Ushuaia, whose nickname is “the end of the world.”
Extreme E might go to the end of the world, but its journey could be the first step into a cleaner world that could lend a new significance to the color green. It won’t signify only green flags and green lights and green money.
One of the teams, one of only two U.S.-owned operations in Extreme E, is Andretti United. It’s a union between Michael Andretti-owned Andretti Motorsport and United Motorsport, the organization of McLaren CEO Zak Brown and former driver Richard Dean. And their driver, rising Rallycross standout Timmy Hansen, who races with partner Catie Munnings, said it all: “Both on a professional level and personally, this is a huge adventure. It’s about something bigger than ourselves.”
On the eve of the inaugural race, Agag said, “Extreme E was such an out-of-the-box idea that many people didn’t think it would ever happen – even I didn’t know if we would get to this day.”
But they did – by ship, by driving legacy, by commitment.
ELEMENTS OF EXTREME E
WHAT: Desert X Prix, the Extreme E Series’ inaugural race
WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, April 3-4
WHERE: Al’Ula, Saudi Arabia
WHERE TO VIEW: Qualifications live on the Internet at the Extreme E website (www.Extreme-E.com); Finals aired live in the U.S. on FOX Sports (FS1, FS2) and BBC, ITV, BT Sport, and Sky Sports in the U.K., and Eurosport across Europe, as well as various outlets throughout Asia, the Caribbean, and South America.
FORMAT: Each prix takes place in two days. Day 1 consists of two qualifying sessions. The field will be divided into two four-car groups in each session. A lottery will determine grids for the first session, with the finishing position determining the grids for the second qualifying session. Day 2 starts with two semifinals. The top four teams after Day 1 have an easier route to the finals, racing in Semifinal 1. The top three in that semifinal advance to the final round. The second semifinal, nicknamed “The Crazy Race,” is a winner-take-all race after which only the first-place team advancing to the final. The final four teams compete in a two-lap shootout.
TEAMS: Including two drivers – one man, one woman – each team is limited to eight people. Each team will have one engineer and up to five mechanics. Teams will decide which driver will start.
ENTRANTS: Formula 1 champions Lewis Hamilton (X44), Nico Rosberg (Rosberg Xtreme Racing), and Jenson Button (JBXE) own three teams. U.S. teams are Andretti United (with Sweden’s Timmy Hansen and England’s Catie Munnings) and Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing (with Americans Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price).
The complete driver line-up (by team and drivers) is X44 – Sébastien Loeb (France) and Cristina Gutiérrez (Spain), Rosberg Xtreme Racing – Johan Kristoffersson (Sweden) and Molly Taylor (Australia), JBXE – Jenson Button (U.K.) and Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky (Sweden), ABT CUPRA XE – Mattias Ekström (Sweden) and Claudia Hürtgen (Germany), ACCIONA/Sainz – Carlos Sainz and Laia Sanz (Spain), Andretti United – Timmy Hansen (Sweden) and Catie Munnings (U.K.), Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing – Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price (U.S.), Hispano Suiza Xite Energy – Oliver Bennett (U.K.) and Christine Giampaoli (Spain), Veloce Racing – Stéphane Sarrazin (France) and Jamie Chadwick (U.K.). Germans Timo Scheider and Jutta Kleinschmidt, the first woman to win the Dakar Rally, are back-up drivers and series advisors.
BONUS: A ‘Hyperdrive’ boost will also be available to each driver on each lap of the race. Activated when the driver presses a button on their steering wheel, they will enjoy an increase in power for a fixed amount of time. The timing for this will play a key role in race strategy.
– Susan Wade
