Photo Gallery: CT behind the scenes at Formula E

Earlier this year, I got the chance to visit the season finale of the inaugural Formula E season - hosted on CT home turf in central London. I never got round to sharing my pictures closer to the event, but now I’m using our new post creator to put all of the best shots in one place.

The event itself was quite strange. It’s a bit like a scaled-down, low-budget Formula 1 event. The track was short and narrow and the cars are about half as fast, but there was still a fantastic atmosphere. There was a real sense of excitement, and curiosity, to the proceedings.

Plenty of Londoners turned out for the double-header event, which is fantastic to see, especially when Formula 1 is suffering huge live audience loss from some of the most historically enthusiastic fanbases - look at the German Grand Prix from the last few years, for example.

The venue was Battersea Park, just down the River Thames from the iconic Battersea Power Station, and it was completely transformed for the event. That’s something I was really impressed with. It was very well organised and put-together event, as you’d expect from the bureaucratic-as-ever FIA. When the sun was shining, the backdrop of one of London’s best Victorian parks looked stunning.

The cars themselves did impress me, despite their lacklustre performance figures. Perhaps I had low expectations… I definitely had low expectations. And with such a narrow twisty track, it gave an illusion of great racing. But that’s the problem. It was an illusion.

A historic park is just not the right place for a racetrack. There was essentially zero room for overtaking. Most of the corners were awkwardly-cambered and tight. They even had to modify part of the circuit and ban overtaking because the cars would damage their suspension on the harsh camber.

Despite this, it was a fun event. Being the championship deciding race, the drivers really gave it a go, which was properly entertaining to watch. And hey, we got a British race winner!

Formula E is a peculiar and interesting new motorsport. It’s got a few seasons of innovation to go, both in the racing rules, car technology, and circuit choices. If it improves all of these, I think it will be genuinely successful. The hardest thing the FIA need to overcome however, is that it needs to become great in it’s own way. Right now, it’s trying too hard to be a scaled-down, low-budget Formula 1 event.