Formula E wins over a sceptic

The cars don't produce a lot of sound, but it's hard to ignore the noise surrounding Formula E since the series launched.

But how much substance is there behind the promotion, the spending, the exotic locations and the heavily-hyped grid of experienced drivers - most of whom have another racing programme as their 'day job' and could (sometimes harshly) be considered as F1 cast-offs?

It was with that question in mind that I headed to Long Beach for my first experience of Formula E in the flesh. And, to be brutally honest, it would be fair to say that I headed Stateside yet to be won over by the electric racing series' charms.

Perhaps I should have known better.

The speed of Formula E cars doesn't matter to ex-F1 racer Vergne © LAT

As is often the case in motorsport (rallying immediately springs to mind), you can't rely on television to do the cars and the drivers justice. Witness Formula E cars in their natural environment (street tracks) up close and you realise quickly that there is a lot more to them than first meets the eye.

We know the cars are underpowered. They are relying on technology which - in racing terms - is in its infancy, and the tight deadlines required to get 40 cars to the teams in time for pre-season testing at Donington last summer played its part in limiting their performance.

But slow doesn't automatically mean easy to drive, or boring to race. As Jean-Eric Vergne told me last weekend, "You can have a great race with rental karts if you put good drivers in them - you don't need speed".

"It works at the moment," the ex-F1 racer added. "It's still great racing, and even if it's not that quick, it's still extremely difficult to drive."

And, up close, there is more going on than the cameras give away. The drivers have to work hard, grappling with heavy cars that are low on downforce and mechanical grip.

In fact, the often-lamented lack of noise has a benefit here, as the quiet gives way to the tyre squeal of the treaded Michelin tyres. You stop noticing that the cars might not be travelling that quickly (fortunately they don't share the bill with any conventional faster series), and the fact that they aren't particularly planted to the road makes them fascinating to watch.

Even the somewhat fiddly temporary chicane on Long Beach's famous Shoreline Drive start/finish 'straight' made for entertaining viewing. The cars were skipping across several lanes of the road, bouncing through a dip in the surface and trying to gently kiss some pretty aggressive kerbing between unforgiving concrete walls.

Again, it was an area where the driver could make the difference, and it was easy to spot from trackside. And after all, isn't that what most people want from motorsport?

Tricky Long Beach chicane made the cars entertaining to watch © LAT

Going back to the sound, while it's different, and certainly quiet, it's by no means silent. And when you have several cars on track at once the sounds of the cars (including battery/gearbox noise, tyre squeal, and even the bashing of kerbs) combine to create a decent atmosphere without being deafening.

Again, this doesn't come across particularly well on TV, especially when music is being played over the top.

With the cars being unconventional, and still new, the drivers are some way off of all converging on a set style that gets the most out of the car. A heavily-rearwards weight distribution - owing to the fact that the battery technology came in significantly over the planned weight - also plays its part in meaning that drivers have to reconfigure their brains every time they switch back to Formula E duties from whatever else they are racing.

As knowledge of the package evolves this variety of approaches and styles will gradually disappear, so it should be cherished while it lasts. Formula E teams and drivers are still in that 'primitive' period where a significant breakthrough can be made that catapults you to the front of the field - much like Long Beach winner Nelson Piquet Jr and China Racing have experienced over the last couple of rounds.

One of the areas where most drivers have struggled with the Spark-Renault SRT_01E has been under braking, with many feeling that the car's performance doesn't warrant carbon brakes.

Without the big forces put through the brakes to keep them in their peak performance window, it's been tough to get a feel for them in the cockpit. Piquet admitted to making progress in this area, which explains why Daniel Abt opened the door for him at the start of the Long Beach race - simply put, he didn't think anyone could brake that late and still make the first corner. Piquet made it look easy.

Vergne points out that with a conventional single-seater - particularly an F1 car - the driver knows everything that it's going to do. He repeatedly talked about having trust in a car. A corner can be taken in the same manner lap after lap, with only mild variables such as tyre degradation needing to be taken into account.

Even if the drivers and teams start to feel like they are getting on top of the spec formula for season one, a lot of that knowledge will be outdated as soon as the technology under the skin of the cars starts to open up for the second season.

Manufacturer involvement should increase the interest in Formula E for next year. As series CEO Alejandro Agag quite bluntly put it last weekend, "without competition [between manufacturers], why would we do this?" It's a story across all major motorsport series, and a narrative of recognisable companies going at it while developing new technologies is bound to ramp up interest.

The manufacturer war has the potential to increase the number of variables that affect performance, but it also carries the risk of damaging one of Formula E's core strengths from its first season - the close competition on track.

Manufacturer competition will come in for Formula E's second season © LAT

The combination of a spec-package, well-run teams and experienced drivers keeps the racing close, and there is a noticeable difference in the standard of the driving compared to what you would see in a junior series. On the ladder to F1, it's common for the desperation of chasing that dream to cloud a driver's judgement, and you also get a wider variety of talents on show as some drivers buy their way onto a grid with opponents they have no business sharing the track with.

The Formula E line-up has surprised even the series bosses so far this season, and if that can be sustained, then there's no reason that the racing can't maintain the hard-but-fair reputation it's on its to be building.

The drivers seemed to enjoy having a more conventional street circuit to race on last weekend in Long Beach. The layout and width of the track meant there was less of the follow-the-leader, energy conservation running that we've seen in some of the other races. While that format often leads to an exciting finish - something we didn't see in Long Beach - it renders a large portion of the race relatively meaningless.

If, as Agag and his colleagues work their way through the near-200 applications from various cities to host a race in the future, they can find some more venues with roads wide enough to get some proper racing done, that will bode well for the quality of the product.

How to make the cars more spectacular to TV viewers is perhaps a bigger challenge (long, head-on shots looking down straights aren't particularly wise), but with series bosses expecting a "significant" increase in performance next season, maybe that won't be an issue for much longer.

They say you shouldn't knock something until you've tried it, and that mantra fits Formula E very well. Agag said ahead of the Long Beach event that everywhere the championship goes, he only hears from the doubters before a race, not after it.

By Saturday evening, he could scratch another sceptic from the list.