Say what you will about Formula E, but the energy management portion of each event provides a special form of strategy that you don’t see anywhere else. Each driver has a certain amount of battery power that he can use. Use too much, and you’ll either be stranded on the track or disqualified after the race. And that’s exactly what happened this morning during FE’s first-ever race on a proper circuit in Valencia.
But there’s an added monkey wrench in this whole situation, too: when a safety car comes out, the FIA automatically subtracts a preset amount of energy from each battery so that no one ends up with a surplus of power. And with four safety cars during this event, any small error on the part of the FIA could result in a seriously disastrous race finish from teams who didn’t calculate their power strategy properly.
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