2021 saw the inaugural season of the electric off road racing series, Extreme E. 9 teams took part in the 5 round championship that started in the hot desert of Saudi Arabia and ended in the UK in typical British weather.
It was a unique format with 2 drivers sharing each team’s sole car. 1 driver had to be female with the other male and a changeover in each race. It became a great spectacle to see world class drivers scrambling to get into and out of their cars.
There would be qualifying on Saturday and the Semi-finals and Crazy race on Sunday before the main event final. Initially only 2 races gave promotion into the 3 car Final though the format changed between every round. Eventually 5 car finals took place allowing those who had a terrible Saturday to still take the top spot.
Desert X-Prix
The start of the season saw very little preparation time for the teams with only a handful of test days in Spain to prepare for the 5 wildly different courses. Soon the cars were shipped off to Saudi Arabia aboard the St Helena.
Chip Ganassi Racing were the ones to experience the bulk of issues during the opening weekend. Sara Price was the first to develop an electrical issue in Shakedown on Friday morning. Not to be outdone, teammate Kyle LeDuc rolled the car in the afternoon which seemed to cripple the car throughout Saturday.
Qualifying was dominated by penalties more than anything else. Half the grid suffered large penalties of over a minute (in one case almost 3 minutes) for speeding into or out of the changeover zone. Team X44, Lewis Hamilton’s team were top qualifiers which would happen at every round this season. ABT Cupra and Veloce Racing both suffered huge rolls for Claudia Hürtgen and Stéphane Sarrazin respectively.
The dust meant following a car closely was almost impossible, with the positions not changing after the opening series of corners. In the Crazy Race Kyle LeDuc closed in on Hürtgen near the end of the race. However, he was unable to see the female racer slow in the section she rolled the day before and he crashed into the back of her.
Johan Kristoffersson for Rosberg X Racing (run by Nico Rosberg) pulled off 2 incredible overtakes at the opening bends in the semi-final and final. He took an incredibly wide line into the corner to slingshot into a lead that Molly Taylor and himself would never lose.
Ocean X-Prix
Round 2 in Senegal for the Ocean X-Prix ran half the course on the beach in what became a 4 car final.
It was a dramatic start to the race as the field ran down to the tight turn 1. JBXE and Team X44 came together with JBXE suffering a race ending suspension failure. At the first corner RXR made contact with Team X44 with Cristina Gutiérrez being eliminated, with broken steering. A red flag was thrown leaving a 1 lap shootout between Kristoffersson and Veloce’s Jamie Chadwick. The triple World rallycross champion came through to win his second race in a row.
Image Credit: Extreme E
Arctic X-Prix
The first ever motor race took place in Greenland for the Artic X-Prix. It was also the first race to feature 5 cars in the final.
Andretti United held off the competition to win their first race while championship leaders RXR suffered from multiple issues. In qualifying the car stopped after hitting a jump too hard while Taylor rolled before continuing to the finish. In the final they went for an audacious move to take the lead over a jump. Again the car landed severely and stopped, leaving the team in last place.
JBXE overcame a penalty in the crazy race to win and secure that newly opened 5th spot on the grid. In the final JBXE came home in second place, close behind winners Andretti United. Team X44 could do not better than 4th after changing a punctured tyre at the driver changeover.
Island X-Prix
The final 2 races in Argentina and Chile were cancelled due to Covid-19 travel restrictions which left the island of Sardinia to host the penultimate round of the season.
On paper it seemed like another convincing win for Rosberg X Racing but the reality was anything but that. After the opening section of track the team were in 4th with a spin for JBXE promoting them 1 position into third. Leaders Team X44 suffered a puncture early into the race but held onto their lead. However, before they could change the tyre the steering broke and the team stopped on track. This gave Chip Ganassi the lead in their first ever final. A clean driver change left them with a 40 second lead and Price only needing to bring the car home. Halfway round the lap the steering failed on the car leaving them stranded.
Out of all of this RXR took the win ahead of Abt Cupra with Mattias Ekstrom missing a door. JBXE came through to third a lap down having again come through the Crazy Race. In that race Sarrazin was trying to close on the leader before rolling for the second time this season in dramatic fashion.
Third in points Andretti United were disqualified from the semi-final. Off the start they crashed into both the other cars in their race before stopping on track. While they completed more distance than Team X44 they were deemed at fault for cutting across the track and were penalized.
Jurassic X-Prix
The season finale took place a week before Christmas in Dorset, England. Another change of format saw 3 laps of the shorter circuit and prescribed that all female drivers start Q2 and Final while their male counterparts started in the car in Q1 and the semi-finals. Typically English weather greeted the championship leaving the track wet and muddy the entire weekend.
Rosberg X Racing made it through to the final and knew they would need to finish 4th to guarantee the title. Team X44 was the only other championship hopefully and needed to secure the victory and the bonus 5 points for fastest Super Sector to have any hope in taking the crown.
The team owned by Lewis Hamilton did exactly what they needed to do in a fairly processional race by winning and taking those bonus points. Rosberg X Racing drove a conservative race dropping back to 4th place at the end of the opening lap. When Kristoffersson took over the car he held a 10 second gap to last place Acciona Sainz and was able to maintain that margin to secure the inaugural title for Rosberg X Racing, Molly Taylor and himself. Both Team X44 and RXR finished on 155 points with the title going the way of RXR curtesy of 3 wins across the 5 round championship.
The pair won the drivers title slightly more convincingly on 133 to Loeb and Gutiérrez’s 121 after a dropped score was taken into account. JBXE finished 3rd in the team’s championship while Timmy Hansen and Catie Munnings were 3rd in the driver’s title for Andretti United.
Image Credit: Extreme E
2022
The series will once again compete across 5 rounds starting in Saudi Arabia. It will be a February event rather than April so that dust will be less of an issue. The remaining rounds will take place across 3 continents and end in November in Uruguay. McLaren will join the series as a 10th team with Tanner Foust and Emma Gilmour driving the car.
Feature Image Credit: Extreme E
