The pioneer's successor charged with making FE grow up

Jean Todt is very fond of calling Formula E the FIA's "baby".

You can see why - the series is young, loud in its own way, and in need of protection. It's also a handy way for the governing body to deflect comparisons between Formula 1 and the electric single-seater championship.

FE also tried to run before it had fully learned how to walk. But its near-collapse in its first season was nevertheless a key part of its start-up infancy - big ideas need big investment, which eventually arrived in the form of Liberty Global (F1 owner Liberty Media's sister corporation) and Discovery Communications as significant shareholders. That cash injection led to expansion in FE's subsequent early years, which morphed into the manufacturer-heavy championship of today that is preparing for its sixth season in 2019/20. Major entrants such as Mercedes and Porsche don't do flippant decisions - they needed to see FE standing on its own two feet.

The successful switch to the Gen2 car signalled the start of a new era and a new story. Races without pitstops eased the lingering issue of electric vehicle range anxiety, which had dogged FE's first four seasons. But discussions about FE's next big step - Gen3 - are already underway. These will increase as the championship heads towards its Gen2.5 facelift at the end of the upcoming season, and subsequently the final two years of action for the current machines.

While he will keep a watching brief as chairman, the young championship's founder, Alejandro Agag, has passed on responsibility for that future to a new charge: former Manchester United and Los Angeles Rams executive Jamie Reigle.

The championship he has inherited may now command stable footing - it claims to have expanded its revenues to over €200million during 2018/19, an apparent increase of more than 50% compared to 2017/18, which led to it making a profit for the first time - but, from all corners, it wants to get bigger and better.

It's time for FE to fully grow up.

This writer first met Agag in his dedicated office at the 2018 Punta del Este E-Prix, which was situated inside the EMotion hospitality club FE constructs in glamorous locations at each race. In fact, the beach-themed party zone was still being constructed ahead of that event. Agag was everything that had been promised - charismatic, committed, a colossus, who had apparently rented a mansion in the coastal city (Uruguay's St Tropez) to host a lavish party. He was FE.

"I'm an accidental sports businessperson" Jamie Reigle

And that was just what the fledgling championship needed to take its pioneering first steps. They had to be wave-making big ones, which inspired onlookers at the same time. Agag, with his outgoing nature and headline-friendly statements (Mario Kart, anyone?), did that.

Autosport's first meeting with Reigle takes place at the 2019/20 Valencia pre-season test in an unassuming office overlooking the Circuit Ricardo Tormo's pit straight (not that Agag couldn't slum it too, his equivalent office at the inaugural Sanya E-Prix was just as Spartan). But the new CEO is making a deliberately low-key entrance to the FE paddock - he has been in the job just five weeks and is still understanding every facet of the championship he is now charged with growing.

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"Building and developing Formula E through our next growth cycle," were Agag's words for Reigle's responsibilities when his appointment was announced last month. To start that process, he's been meeting with FE's stakeholders and its staff - studying what he must now guide and grow.

Reigle describes himself as an "accidental sports businessperson". He started out working in finance and private equity at JP Morgan and The Carlyle Group, before joining Manchester United in 2007. For the next 10 years, he worked in several roles at the Premier League club, eventually launching its Asia-Pacific operations in Hong Kong, then heading up its initial public offering move on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as serving on its board of directors. In '17 he was hired by the Rams as executive vice president of business operations, which meant leading the NFL team's corporate and commercial divisions - responsible for ticketing, hospitality, partnerships, media, marketing, retail, strategy and finance.

"I didn't grow up dreaming about either being in the sports business or ending up specifically in motorsport," says Reigle, who grew up in Montreal with a "massive petrolhead" father, regularly attending the grand prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

"I very much started in finance and private equity and thought that that would be my path so it's a bit of a circuitous tale of how I ended up at Man United. When I got the call [regarding the FE CEO position] I looked at it and I thought, 'Well, there's just not many sports properties that are at this stage of development'."

It's clear where FE has been and where it is now - but debate continues to reign, with sources reporting this is even the case in its head office, over the championship's very nature.

Is it an entertainment product? Is it pure motorsport? Does its audience already exist? Or does it only appeal to new followers? For Reigle, it's simple.

"What I would say in terms of the 'who we are' - this is a question we're discussing a lot internally and it has implications for how we project that externally," he explains.

"I go back to very simple questions. Was the world looking for another car racing series in 2013? No, it was not. The existing platforms - F1, in the US, NASCAR, IndyCar - all these series existed and they're serving their customers very well. We were started because of climate change, because of a recognition there was going to be a shift in electric vehicles.

"So, in my mind, we exist to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles - that's our core purpose."

The goal of furthering EV adoption can be seen in the stories attached to the championship's first two cars. Although FE has veered quite considerably from its initial tech development road map (remember, battery competition was supposed to be open from the 2016/17 season), the messages have been clear. Gen1 was all about getting going, proving that electric cars could go racing and race well. Gen2 was easing the range anxiety fears and making everything bigger and better.

The parallels with Reigle's responsibility are clear here, and, while stressing he's not arriving "with a magic wand and thinking I can revolutionise this overnight", he's already got ideas about the story of the next car.

"From what I hear at the time [the Gen2 car was being conceived] it was like, 'Well, we're not going to have a pitstop then right?'," he says. "So the necessity forces innovation in other ways, which leads to attack mode, which changes the strategy of the race.

Reigle has the stable harmony box ticked with the teams, but with that must come a precise vision and a firm hand to ensure it is enacted

"To me that's the beauty of this product - that it continues to evolve. So, for Gen3, as we think about why might a consumer not adopt an electric vehicle, there's a perception perhaps around charging availability and how quickly I can get my car charged. That's a theme that the folks who are much smarter than I am are working on - the viability of that.

"Where that gets interesting is then it potentially feeds back into the racing product, which is to say, 'OK, well if you can change the speed with which you charge the cars perhaps you can reintroduce a pitstop'. I'm not saying we'll definitely do that, but it creates the degrees of freedom on the product, which I think is really exciting. That's the big one, I think. The theme of rapid charging or fast charging, but I suspect there's going to be other input."

Further braking regeneration requirements, torque vectoring and all-wheel drive are other ideas that come up when Gen3 is mentioned in the FE paddock. One interesting - and dangerous - upcoming issue for FE is that the manufacturers it craved and wooed will have different ideas on future tech paths to serve their own road car sales needs.

Agag had a clear policy when it came to the teams: maintain consensus and close dialogue, but the final decisions on the rules and the championship's future direction were ultimately out of their hands.

On this point, Reigle says: "We want to make sure that it's continually attractive to new entrants and to the folks already within it, so they'll shape those inputs that determine [a sustainable business model] in terms of the technical regulations and the sporting regulations - I'm a big believer in that."

That's the stable harmony box ticked, but with that must come a precise vision and a firm hand to ensure it is enacted.

So, here are the aims now Reigle is in charge: strengthen and grow FE.

"First of all we have to consolidate the success we've had, which is making sure that the cities we have signed up find it to be a really compelling value proposition. That the teams we're serving their goals, that the OEMS are coming in for the right reasons, that the drivers feel that it's a really compelling championship to compete in," he explains. "Then if you come back to like the core purpose, accelerating the adoption of EV."

And here's the plan to achieve those goals: improve the FE product and take it to new audiences.

"We need to continue to innovate on the product," Reigle adds. "We need to make sure more people are watching, we need to improve the distribution, we need to be in more markets. There are some fairly big geographies where we are not operating or we already are but perhaps we should be more deeply penetrated.

"I don't have a magic wand, but I'm very confident that we've got a long way to go in terms of increasing the visibility of the championship and we're going to be really focused on executing it."

The teams have been impressed so far - including those who have seen it all with Agag.

"We've had a few good chats with him and he seems like a very good guy, very experienced in what's needed in my view," says Envision Virgin Racing team boss Sylvain Filippi (above, centre), who has worked at the squad since FE began.

"To be fair to him, coming from his background to this there's a lot to learn and understand. So, he's in all the meetings and making very sensible comments. It's very early days, we'll give him time, but I like the idea of it - I like the structure and I like the idea of someone like him to steer the sport into a higher level and also to make it more commercial, and reap all the benefits of what we've been doing for five years."

FE may no longer be a baby, but now it has another parental figure to follow

The plan is familiar - make a business better. But it's also one that's clearly needed given FE took six years to become profitable. Of course, that isn't to say its original pioneer did a bad job - far from it - it's just that the championship is still very youthful. It must grow up to survive. It's capitalism, it's the ruthless nature of sports business.

FE needed Agag. First to find its place in the world, then to make sure that world paid attention. The next step is less shouty, which probably suits the considered and softly-spoken Reigle.

But FE must not lose its identity - and it's clear Reigle understands this when he says "one of the attractions of this role was the ability to learn from and work with a really visionary entrepreneur" in Agag, even if he adds "clearly he has a style and an approach and a set of capabilities that I think none of us could necessary emulate no matter how much we wanted to".

Agag has not gone very far, which is not to undermine Reigle's position at all. As chairman - based just across the tower block in Hammersmith that also houses sister-series Extreme E - Agag will still work closely with FE's existing manufacturers, cities and sponsors, allowing his successor to concentrate on finding the new markets and fans the championship needs to fulfill the growth target Reigle has been hired to hit.

"We're totally aligned," says Reigle. "Four weeks in, my read would be we're good at different things. That complementarity is really important and as long as we maintain alignment around the strategic direction, which I fully expect, I think it's a pretty powerful combination."

FE may no longer be a baby, but now it has another parental figure to follow.

It will retain Agag's flair with its on-track shenanigans - as well as the FIA's strict example as its regulator. But in Reigle it has a firmly focused new leader, which could well be just what it needs to reach its full potential.