Formula E is once again facing an enforced two-month break in its schedule having not managed to replace its planned 2025 race in the Thai city of Chiang Mai.
The scheduled date between the Jeddah and Homestead races in February and April was never officially confirmed as being intended for Thailand and was left as a 'to be confirmed' slot on the 2024-25 calendar for March 8.
The Race has learned the date is set to be deleted from the final draft of the calendar that will be issued later this week.
The Race reported in August that the planned Chiang Mai event had run into trouble following national elections in July, when prime minister Srettha Thavisin was usurped after the country's constitutional committee decreed that he bypassed ethical rules over cabinet appointments in his government.
Thailand then appointed Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was prime minister between 2001 and 2006 and who briefly owned Manchester City FC.
This change in power significantly reduced the possibility of Chiang Mai hosting a Formula E race, leaving the series in need of an alternative to fill the gap between its first visit to Formula 1's Saudi Arabian Grand Prix venue Jeddah on February 14-15 and its debut at NASCAR venue Homestead on April 12.
But no alternative could be found in time for this week's FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting, which will be held virtually.
Several possibilities were scoped out by promoter Formula E Operations. Sanya, on the Chinese island of Hainan, which hosted a race in March 2019, was at one stage the most likely replacement.
But when this couldn't be nailed down, Formula E elected to scratch the date from the calendar. It is unknown whether the schedule will be reduced to 15 races or if either the Jakarta or Homestead fixtures will become a double-header event.
Formula E has had several of its recent seasons compromised by calendar difficulties.
In 2022 it had to activate a last-minute race in Marrakesh in June to plug a gap after the planned Vancouver E-Prix was postponed and then cancelled.
Last season, political issues in and around the scheduled second Hyderabad E-Prix that ultimately derailed that race left Formula E with a two-month gap in its calendar from the Diriyah races in January until the Sao Paulo race in March.
THE RACE SAYS
Another season, another two months with no Formula E racing.
Formula E's habit of disjointed schedules goes on at a time when its momentum needs cohesion more than ever.
Sportingly, commercially and from a media sense this is bad for Formula E. After the first three events in Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Jeddah, when the momentum of its season is built, it will then go into hibernation while other championships begin.
There is no other championship that exists in the world that consistently has such gaps in races over the course of a season.
And even if there was, the effect wouldn't be as destabilising as it is for Formula E, which starts its racing in December and runs through to July - meaning the first three months of its activity comes at a time when it has the motorsport world largely to itself.
For participants in and fans of Formula E (of which there are 374 million, according to the promoter), the confusion is real. That's because on several occasions the promoter of the world championship has claimed that locations are queuing up to host races. Dozens of them.
Where were they when Formula E needed just one race for March 2025?
Last October, Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told The Race one of his chief objectives was to foster "stability on the dates" and "the right gaps between the races; two to four weeks is about the right window".
That hasn't been achieved in recent seasons and it must be intensely frustrating for Formula E itself too, of course.
Many factors are outside of its control when it comes to lost events such as Vancouver (local promoters' debacle), Hyderabad (regional politics) and Chiang Mai (national politics).
Yet in Chiang Mai's case the crucial elections took place in August, seven months before the planned race and two months before the WMSC, where the calendar had to be signed off.
Formula E's excuses for not fulfilling its goal of a full and consistent calendar, after 11 seasons of operating, must now be considered hollow.
