Leonardo DiCaprio, the actor and ‘environmental campaigner’, has also founded
the Venturi team, based in Monaco.
Michael Andretti, who had a brief career in F1 and a much longer one in
IndyCar, also has his own team.
How is a race going to work with those batteries?
There are 10 teams, each with two drivers, and each driver has two cars. Races
will last around an hour with one mandatory pit stop to change cars (the
batteries are expected to last about 25-30 minutes, and can’t be changed
during a race). There will be no desperate scramble to find a power socket,
as mid-race charging is banned.
The whole event takes place in one day with practice, qualifying and the race.
Points are on offer for pole and fastest lap.
Will they be particularly quick?
Yes and no. Off the line, they are fairly rapid – 0-60mph is three seconds.
But the top speed is limited to about 135mph.
F1 is now famously quiet, surely this will be even quieter?
It will. At just 80 decibels, they are some way off from even the new quiet F1
engine, which are 134 decibels. They also sound more like aeroplanes than
racing cars, but it won’t be as if a jet engine is taking off next to you.
It will take a clever use of microphones on television (it will be shown
live in ITV4), to hear much.
It might be a novelty, but is it going anywhere nice?
There are 10 events, and the whole point is they race in city centres and not
only traditional circuits.
For the 2014/15 season there 10 are races including the opener in September in
Beijing (around the Olympic Park), Miami, Los Angeles, Monaco, Berlin and
London.
A layout of the Beijing Formula E track