What is Extreme-E?
There's a brand new racing series coming your way this weekend - but what's it all about?
Sustainability Mission:
The series’ goal is to use electric racing to highlight remote environments under threat of climate change issues, and to encourage everyone to take positive action to protect our planet’s future. Extreme E is committed to having a net-zero carbon footprint by the end of its first season, which means offsetting what it cannot avoid via ALLCOT certificated global programmes.
Extreme E is also a signatory of the United Nations’ Sports for Climate Action Framework. As part of this, Extreme E plans to promote greater environmental responsibility, reduce the overall climate impact from sports, use its platform to educate people on climate action, promote sustainable and responsible consumption and to advocate for climate action through communication.
Extreme E has also repurposed an old Royal Mail vessel called RMS St Helena which served as a Royal Mail freight ship from 1990 to 2016. It's now going to become Extreme E's “floating paddock”, as it transports the entire series infrastructure, the cars, and a team of scientists from Oxford and Cambridge (who will use the vessel as a base for scientific research along their year-long voyage).
Finally, at each race location, Extreme E plans to leave behind a legacy project, e.g. creating projects that benefit the local environment and community. The drivers will also get involved with this as Extreme E aims to empower local communities and to promote renewable energy in order to grow economies while reducing carbon emissions, etc.
Teams and Drivers:
Stars from all across the spectrum of motorsport will be joining Extreme E in its debut season. Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg (amongst others) have both set up their own teams with drivers like Catie Munnings, Jamie Chadwick, Sebastian Loeb and Carlos Sainz just being a few of the famous faces taking to the track. Later this week, I'll be posting an in-depth look at all the drivers this season so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Race Calendar:
Race Weekend Format:
There will be two days of racing on both Saturday and Sunday. Each team races twice on Saturday, in Qualifying Round 1 and Qualifying Round 2. Both Semi-Finals (Semi-Final 1 and Semi-Final 2) (Crazy Race)) and the Final Race will take place on Sunday.
Each race is two laps – one lap driven by the female and one lap driven by the male and all results will be based on race finishing position, not race time.
Four races will be held on Saturday:
Qualifying Round 1 (two races)
Qualifying Round 2 (two races).
Qualifying Round 1, Race 1 will involve five cars and Qualifying Round 1, Race 2 will have four cars competing. The choice of starting positions for Qualifying Round 1 will be based on a lottery draw.
Saturday event points for each race (to calculate Sunday starting positions) will be awarded as follows:
1st: 4 points
2nd: 3 points
3rd: 2 point
4th: 1 points
5th: 0 points
The top four point scorers after Saturday’s races qualify for Semi-Final 1 and the remaining five teams qualify for Semi-Final 2 (Crazy Race).
Then there will be three races held on Sunday: Semi-Final 1, Semi-Final 2 (Crazy Race) and the Final. There will be four cars in Semi-Final 1 and five cars in Semi-Final 2 – the Crazy Race - and the Final. The choice of grid starting positions for the Semi-Finals will be based on points order after Qualifying rounds. The top three teams from Semi-Final 1 and the first and second placed teams from Semi-Final 2 / the Crazy Race then qualify for the Final.
The starting position for the Final will be decided by fans through the GridPlay voting system (more on that below) Finally there will be a Standby team for the Final to be the fourth placed team in Semi-Final 1.
Grid Play:
Grid Play is designed to put the fans at the centre of the action to help influence the outcome of a race. Fans will get to vote for their favourite drivers and the team with the most votes will get to choose their spot on the grid for the Final Race on Sunday. Fans can vote twice a day with the total number of votes for both drivers in a team being added together to present the final result. The five teams that qualify for the final will take their percentage of the votes. Fans will be able to enter online and via Twitter.
Come back later this week to check out all of the drivers that will be taking part in this year's campaign.
Will you be watching Extreme E? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Join In
Comments (14)
Will certainly give it a go - bit concerned about the voting idea though as some teams (e.g. Hamilton's) may get an undue advantage...
Well then you can start a movement to vote for another team accordingly 😆
Think I'll wait 'til the weekend and see how it pans out - though I reserve the right to get on my soapbox afterwards and to have a moan...
How do I watch this? Is it online?
Lots of different TV channels have it, if you're in UK for example, it's on ITV and Sky, etc. There's a list on their website I think but it's pretty good coverage everywhere so far.
Thanks!
Hamilton vs Rosberg🤩
Round??? 😂 Am quite looking forward to this I must say. Nice to have something a bit different.