Formula E will take another step closer to finally introducing energy-boosting pitstops with a special practice session dedicated to the ‘pit boost’ technology on the eve of the Sao Paulo season-opener next month.
The Race can reveal that a session focused on further practice pitstops will be held at the Anhembi Sambadrome street track on Friday December 6, the day before the first race of the 2024/25 campaign.
The move comes after a test race with pitstops was conducted at Jarama last week.
That activity was not without issues as Norman Nato’s Nissan and the DS Penskes of Jean-Eric Vergne and Max Guenther all hit varying degrees of problems with the charging equipment.
The Jarama test was seen by some as the ‘do or die’ moment for deciding if the delayed fast-charging pitstop format - the first planned pitstops in FE races since the end of its formative 'car swap' era - would be ditched or finally make its debut in the coming season.
But the FIA and Formula E are not being hurried into making a decision on whether to integrate it into some 2025 races.
In next month’s mandatory test session the 22-car field will be divided into two groups of 11, with teams free to decide which driver to pit in which session as long as both participate in one.
Each group will get a seven minute session to complete a run plan of an out-lap, in-lap, the pit boost stop itself (set at the normal 600kW), an out-lap and then a further timed lap and then back into the pits.
It will run with limited power of 300kW and the initial state-of-charge has to be <60% in accordance with the pit boost supplier Fortescue Zero’s ‘manual restrictions provided by the supplier for the RESS [battery] and the booster’. The use of the four-wheel drive mode, which comes via the spec front powertrain, is forbidden in the planned session.
Several teams stated last week at Jarama that they had seen clear improvement in the reliability of the pit boosting equipment and that the dummy race had generally gone to plan.
“It's kind of a hot topic because we are all lacking a bit of experience with these [pit boost] races,” Nissan team director Dorian Boisdron told The Race after the test.
“This is also why it was interesting to do that exercise.
“I have to say that the main priority until now was to just have clarity on if it is technically possible to do this.
“We made a massive step today. We could have spent one year talking about it, but at the end of the day, we are limited by the technology itself.
“The steps made on that are great.”
Despite some issues with both Vergne and Guenther’s charging cable at Jarama, DS Penske technical director Phil Charles said that from his viewpoint “it went pretty well” and “did what I think all of our simulation up front suggested it would”.
He called that “good reassurance” given it was the first such full-field simulation.
“In terms of the hardware, considering that's the first time we've done a multi-car pitstop like that with the factor of bringing all the cars in one place in a pitlane all at once, it was decent,” he added.
Race director Scot Elkins had delayed the planned pitstop window by a lap in what has been described to The Race as testing the system of the range in which teams could pit their cars.
This triggered half of the cars in the field - as only one car per team can stop in the designated pit apron area - to duck into the pits at the same time. That won’t be possible at all FE venues and is one reason why pit boost stops won’t be seen at every round.
“This is a nice wide pitlane, so you can release cars like in F1 when you've got a wide pitlane and can release a car and not cause a problem,” said Charles.
Sao Paulo is one of the tracks where it would be challenging if not impossible to conduct mass pitstops in an actual race.
But the F1 venues at Mexico City (pictured above), Jeddah and the NASCAR and IMSA standard pit set-up at Homestead should be able to accommodate the plans.
The FIA and FE’s target appears to be using pit boost stops in conjunction with the already established attack mode format for one of the 2024/25 season’s six double-headers - which will happen in Jeddah, Tokyo, Monaco, Shanghai, Berlin and London.
