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Everything You Need to Know About the Extreme E Opener From Saudi Arabia

Photo credit: Extreme E
Photo credit: Extreme E
  • Extreme E, the all-electric SUV series, opens debuts April 4-5 with the Desert X Prix in Al’Ula.

  • Formula 1 champions Lewis Hamilton (X44), Nico Rosberg (Rosberg Xtreme Racing), and Jenson Button (JBXE) own three teams. U.S. teams are Andretti United (with Sweden’s Timmy Hansen and England’s Catie Munnings) and Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing (with Americans Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price).

  • Each prix takes place in two days. Day 1 consists of two qualifying sessions. The field will be divided into two four-car groups in each session.


Series founder Alejandro Agag could not have timed the launch of his revolutionary off-road series brainchild, Extreme E, any more perfectly.

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It will debut this weekend with the Desert X Prix in Al’Ula, an archeological treasure trove in the northwestern region of Saudi Arabia that’s bound to this racing enterprise by ecological forces as fierce as its sun-parched conditions.

The whole purpose of Extreme E is to spotlight some of the most remote, most damaged ecosystems on Earth to raise awareness of climate-change challenges—all while showcasing the performance capabilities of all-electric SUVs in extreme conditions.

Photo credit: John Lamparski - Getty Images
Photo credit: John Lamparski - Getty Images

The series’ strategy is to use the race cars as research-and-development projects in the hope that their environment-compatible innovations will filter into automakers’ consumer-production market. That, in turn, if the experiment goes as planned, should promote environmental responsibility, reduce the overall climate impact from sports, promote sustainable and responsible consumption globally—yes, save the Earth.

Noble and initially regarded as impossible or at least improbable, Agag’s marriage of responsibly inventive racing and eco-rescue is on the threshold of reality.

“If anybody has had any experience with Alejandro, they know that’s his approach: to look at the ridiculous and make things happen,” Extreme E race director Scot Elkins said. In a recent online chat with fellow International Council of Motorsport Sciences colleagues, he confirmed that Agag is in essence, throwing down to other motorsport series, challenging them to embrace another kind of green besides flags, lights, and money. “Oh yeah, that’s totally Alejandro’s way. That’s his style,” Elkins said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, guys, here’s what we’re doing. Try to catch up.”

The chase isn’t on yet. It’s unclear what impact this weekend’s racing in the thirsty, rocky desert will have on the worldwide racing scene. But one thing’s for sure: Extreme E virtually will have center stage all to itself with NASCAR and the NHRA idle for Easter observances and the 2021 IndyCar season not yet under way.

Photo credit: Extreme E
Photo credit: Extreme E

By design, these remote locations on Extreme E’s inaugural schedule (including Senegal, Greenland, Brazil, and Argentina) are perfect for its no-spectator policy. That’s also ideal with so many racetracks around the world struggling to follow thoughtful public-health practices as coronavirus lingers. Series organizers have concluded that “depending on the type and location of events, fans can represent 20-50 percent of the total footprint of the event, once you consider their transport, food and beverage, and merchandising.” So Extreme E deliberately wants no spectators at races “in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint.”

Even journalists, videographers, and broadcasters are kept at bay for the same reason. Instead, remote coverage will employ four drones, in-car cameras, and advanced technology to send footage back to one of its London offices which has become a centralized “UHD-ready” broadcast and media center. Chief marketing office Ali Russell said, “As well as the live racing, we are producing behind-the-scenes programming which delves deeper into the championship and its wider purposes concerning electrification, environment, and equality.”

Just like no roar of the crowd, Extreme E will have no roar of the engines. It won’t have that exhilarating whine of an IndyCar, that low-flying-airplane buzz of today’s next-gen NASCAR stocker, or that ear-splitting cackle of a Top Fuel dragster. It’s racing on the Q.T.—sort of.

“They do make a sound. They make a very distinct sound,” Elkins said of the fully electric Odyssey 21 that operates on a battery from Williams Advanced Engineering that produces a maximum output of 400 kWh of usable energy (equivalent to 550bhp). Extreme E’s world-first alliance with AFC Energy allows teams to charge those batteries using hydrogen fuel-cell technology using zero-emission energy.

Elkins, whose impressive motorsports résumé includes serving as race director of the Formula E championship as well as the Formula 1, 2, and 3 series and tech and competition roles at IMSA and CART, said, “It sounds stupid, and I’m probably going to sound like a California hippie . . . the sounds actually exist—you just don’t hear them over the engine noise. When the engine noise goes away, all of a sudden you hear a car braking. During a practice session, I can hear a driver applying a set of brakes. And contact between two cars is like the most violent thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life, because (traditionally), so much of the sound is being drowned out by the engine. The sound of carbon and metal hitting each other . . . is like a car crash happened outside your window. It’s just amazing. All of the things you hear are things that happen all the time but you’d never realize are there. It’s just a different experience. It brings a whole new level of experience to the event.”

Photo credit: Extreme E
Photo credit: Extreme E

The cars are of a singular design and outfitted identically with parts manufactured by Spark Racing Technology in France and encased in a body of made from natural flax fibers from the Swiss company Bcomp that’s mounted on a niobium-reinforced steel alloy tubular frame. That’s the technical description. Maybe more importantly, they also are a curiously subtle guilt trip. Extreme E chose the SUV model because it’s the most popular on the consumer market but also the most polluting. Agag had a point to make: Consumers can have their indulgent vehicles and protect the Earth in the process. It’s all thanks to Extreme E’s worldwide collaboration and its proof where the specially designed Continental Tire rubber meets the sand, ice, rocks, and otherwise risky terrain.

Continental has produced a series-specific tread for durability—and a monitoring device that collects, measures, and analyzes such aspects as tire pressure and temperature in real time and transmits that information to a cockpit display. Each team is allocated one set of tires per race and is permitted two used tires from the previous race.

“We’re using the exact same vehicles the teams are racing as our medical car,” Elkins said. “So the medical team has the ability to access any kind of incident that occurs.” That, too, just might be a first in the history of motorsport.

Photo credit: Phil Owen 2020
Photo credit: Phil Owen 2020

One of Extreme E’s proudest departures from tradition is the grand and historic ship St. Helena, the “floating centerpiece” which pulls double duty for the series. The St. Helena, a distinguished former Royal Mail Ship that navigated the globe on behalf of Britain but has been refitted at great expense and home-ported at Liverpool, is Extreme E’s freight and logistics hub. It hauls the championship’s cars, houses the spectrum of personnel in its 62 cabins, and provides space for race control and the science lab that replaces its original 20-square-meter swimming pool.

(Elkins conceded that Extreme E’s plan isn’t at net-zero emissions yet because participants still have to travel by traditional means to reach the ship. However, the bigger point, he said, is “that we’re not flying a bunch of cargo around the world.”)

Furthermore, Russell said the ship provides “the opportunity to conduct research into various areas of the marine environment during the global voyage in its onboard science laboratory, which will be home to a number of scientists during its year-long voyage.”

South Africa native Richard Washington is a professor of climate science at the U.K.’s renowned University of Oxford and will be front and center as the scientific team’s desert expert this weekend. He called Extreme E “a masterstroke to combine these concepts and goals with sport. It makes issues relatable for people. If I were to stand up and talk about convection in the Congo Basin, I don’t suppose too any people would tune in to listen, but if you do it through a different angle, you might just get that audience. What we’ve discovered with climate and climate change is that we need all the help we can get, and this is a wonderful combination.”

Extreme E has painstakingly selected its race locations to demonstrate that out-of-whack climates take various forms. So following the Saudi Arabia kickoff, the series will travel to Senegal, Greenland, Brazil, and Argentina.

The key environmental challenge in Al-’Ula is water availability that is projected to decrease by 10-30 percent. That potentially will affect 2.4 billion people and displace as many as 700 million, triggering a massive migration of climate refugees. The terrain is dotted with dramatic rock formations for a beauty that contradicts the harsh land that has experienced more water evaporation than rainstorms can replenish. Still, the region has the chance to restore its biologically rich ecosystem.

Photo credit: Extreme E
Photo credit: Extreme E

Unlike Al-’Ula, Lac Rose, Senegal, doesn’t have a water shortage. It’s the opposite. Rising sea levels and erosion pose the biggest threats. For Extreme E’s vehicles, the biggest threats along Africa’s Atlantic coast May 29-30 will be sand bars, salt beds, rocks, gravel, and bumpy land on the series’ lone oceanfront course. At risk environmentally in Senegal are coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrasses (erosion); crucial fish stocks (food scarcity); and oil spills, agrochemicals, and plastics (food-chain and ocean-ecosystem contamination).

In Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, arctic warming is bringing along with it accelerated melting of the ice cap, rising sea levels, and endangerment of the polar bear and ringed seal. Sea ice (which scientists have determined is dwindling rapidly) reflects the sun’s rays. So warmer oceans can compound the environmental and social situations globally. Extreme E teams will race Aug. 28-29 on the receding Russell Glacier, which is part of a UNESCO Heritage site.

The scene will be wildly different when Extreme E arrives in Pará, Brazil, for the Oct. 23-24 event. Tropical rainforests and lush settings surround this course, but racers will the region of this Brazilian state that has been damaged from forest fire and drought, significant results of agriculture, cattle grazing, timber-harvesting, and development.

Picture-postcard Patagonian panoramas of Argentina’s Tierra Del Fuego – site of the season finale Dec. 11-12—belie the consequences of glacier recession, ice-cap thinning, and ice-sheet melting. The series has chosen a remote circuit in one of the Earth’s last frontiers, near the town of Ushuaia, whose nickname is “the end of the world.”

Photo credit: Extreme E
Photo credit: Extreme E

And those locations combine for another “green” aspect. It seems Agag and Co. cover all the bases—even the trophies are “eco-P.C.” and decidedly unique. Uruguayan designer Mariano Pineynia won a contest against more than 100 other entrants from 31 nations. Using the shape of the Extreme E logo as its basic shape, Pineynia fashioned each X of the five Prix trophies to reflect a different material specific to that course environment. This weekend’s trophy will feature stone to signify the desert and water scarcity. The others will elevate to art-status the race’s settings: recycled plastic for the ocean (Senegal), recycled mirror for the arctic (Greenland), burnt wood for the Amazon rainforest (Brazil), and recycled glass for the thinning ice sheets in glaciers (Argentina).

So Extreme E simply is yet another evolution in the sports/social justice connection. It’s much like the U.S.-China so-called “ping-pong diplomacy” of the 1970s or tennis star Arthur Ashe’s low-key but powerful influence in the death of apartheid in South Africa or today’s Ultimate Frisbee, which promotes co-operation among Israeli and Palestinian youths.

“Extreme E is completely different than anything that has come down the line so far,” Elkins said. “It’s not just about the buzzwords of ‘sustainable electric vehicles.’ The real idea behind it is to bring international acclaim to the issues of climate change. The locations of the events have been chosen to highlight the real issues that are going on. The idea is to take electric vehicles and race in these places that are having severe climate change, to bring more notice to these areas, to make the world more aware of what’s going on to see exactly how bad it is.”

Gender equality is central to the format, he said: “It’s required that [each team has] one male driver and one female driver. Each of them will do a lap [solo]. The race is two laps, eight to nine miles long, so one lap is a significant amount of time.

“It’s about walking the walk, not just talking the talk.”

EXTREME E ESSENTIALS

WHAT: Desert X Prix, the Extreme E Series’ inaugural race

WHEN: Saturday and Sunday, April 3-4

WHERE: Al’Ula, Saudi Arabia

TV

Sunday, April 4

Extreme E Qualifying, Al'Ula, Saudi Arabia; noon-3 p.m., FS2 (L)

Monday, April 5

Extreme E Semifinals, Al'Ula, Saudi Arabia, noon-1:30 p.m., FS2 (L)

Extreme E Finals, Al'Ula, Saudi Arabia, 1:30 p.m., FS2 (L)

Extreme E Highlights Show, 3 p.m., FS2 (S)

(Times ET)

Qualifications can also be found live on the Internet at the Extreme E website (www.Extreme-E.com)

FORMAT: Each prix takes place in two days. Day 1 consists of two qualifying sessions. The field will be divided into two four-car groups in each session. A lottery will determine grids for the first session, with the finishing position determining the grids for the second qualifying session. Day 2 starts with two semifinals. The top four teams after Day 1 have an easier route to the finals, racing in Semifinal 1. The top three in that semifinal advance to the final round. The second semifinal, nicknamed “The Crazy Race,” is a winner-take-all race after which only the first-place team advancing to the final. The final four teams compete in a two-lap shootout.

TEAMS: Including the two drivers—one man, one woman—each team is limited to eight people. Each team will have one engineer and up to five mechanics. Teams will decide which driver will start.

ENTRANTS: Formula 1 champions Lewis Hamilton (X44), Nico Rosberg (Rosberg Xtreme Racing), and Jenson Button (JBXE) own three teams. U.S. teams are Andretti United (with Sweden’s Timmy Hansen and England’s Catie Munnings) and Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing (with Americans Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price).

The complete driver lineup (by team and drivers)

X44 - Sébastien Loeb (France) and Cristina Gutiérrez (Spain)

Rosberg Xtreme Racing - Johan Kristoffersson (Sweden) and Molly Taylor (Australia)

JBXE - Jenson Button (U.K.) and Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky (Sweden)

ABT CUPRA XE – Mattias Ekström (Sweden) and Claudia Hürtgen (Germany)

ACCIONA/Sainz – Carlos Sainz and Laia Sanz (Spain)

Andretti United – Timmy Hansen (Sweden) and Catie Munnings (U.K.)

Segi TV Chip Ganassi Racing – Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price (U.S.),

Hispano Suiza Xite Energy – Oliver Bennett (U.K.) and Christine Giampaoli (Spain),

Veloce Racing – Stéphane Sarrazin (France) and Jamie Chadwick (U.K.).

Germans Timo Scheider and Jutta Kleinschmidt, the first woman to win the Dakar Rally, are back-up drivers and series advisors.

BONUS: A ‘Hyperdrive’ boost will also be available to each driver on each lap of the race. Activated when the driver presses a button on their steering wheel, they will enjoy an increase in power for a fixed amount of time. The timing for this will play a key role in race strategy.