As revealed by The Race last month, Formula E will take 11 celebrities and embed them in its teams before hosting a behind-closed-doors time trial event at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium in March.
The initial timetable for the event has given just 20 minutes of running per day for the guest drivers, who will also go through a ‘training period’ with teams ahead of the event that will happen on March 5 and 6.
Now the plan for what's been titled 'Evo Sessions' has been officially announced, let's outline and analyse it, explore how the event has been devised from scratch and why it could benefit or backfire as Formula E takes another reputational risk.
Why is it happening?
Paddock legend has it that the idea for the Evo Sessions came via a dream Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds apparently had last year.
Whether that was an actual dream or a metaphorical lightbulb idea is beside the point now, as it all becomes a reality in March.
Dodds professed that “the initial reaction when I presented the concept of Evo Sessions to our teams and partners was, ‘this is wild!’- which is when I immediately knew we had to bring it to life.”
The conscious reason why it has been devised is because Formula E again exposed itself to an eight-week gap in its own schedule after a planned race in Chaing Mai in Thailand was unable to take place. The northern Thai city was set to host a race in March to bridge the gap between the Jeddah double-header in February and the first visit to Homestead in April.
That meant a Plan B was needed. With a replacement event not forthcoming, plans for something else started to gather momentum last November. That was when a deal was struck for Formula E to use the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, including a portion of the Formula 1 track in conjunction with the stadium for the event.
This was initially, and only internally known as the ‘Creators Cup’. The idea involved selecting one celebrity/influencer per team to go against the clock before seeing how close they can get to one of their team's two regular drivers.
The idea was met privately with much scepticism by the teams and perhaps still is to a large extent. But the big questions - such as who will pay for any crash damage, does this sit outside the financial regulations and which cars will be used for the event - have now mostly been answered.
The car that will be used will be one of each team’s race cars which is free to be selected by the teams. Any cost coming from damage or replacement to hardware will be outside of the cost cap and not have sporting carry-over for actual rounds.
Will the tone be right?
The potential benefits of engaging celebrities and their fans/followers are obvious for Formula E. It markets the cars, the drivers and the series ethos through a lens held up to waves of yet-to-be-converted Formula E fans, while also offering multiple content streams to fill the action hole from mid-February to mid-April.
Yet how Formula E portrays the guests driving the cars will have to be managed carefully. The preparation for driving the cars will be key but if the celebrities prove to be comfortable with them, then a perception of ‘anyone can drive a Formula E car’ could actually prove damaging.
“If we were to put content creators in our car, and obviously we would do everything in our power to make sure that if they get in that car they're going to do it safely, we can also use the same time to showcase just how superhero-heroic these drivers are,” Dodds told The Race in Mexico City earlier this month.
“That is because getting into the car and demonstrating how bloody difficult it is to drive, how complex it is to drive, and their results being a million miles away from the kind of results that these superheroes put together, I think could do the opposite.
“It could showcase just how complex, how advanced, how technologically advanced, and how incredible some of these athletes are.
“For me, to take this sport to the next level, we have to raise the profile of the drivers. And part of that is people have to know who they are, know a bit about their story, and recognise their skill set.
“I think if we do something with content creators, we can deliver all of that stuff through this. If we treat it as just, ‘oh, anyone can jump in, have a go’ and then not show the driver driving it, and how complex it is, and the whole journey, I think that’s a risk.
"But we're aware of what we've got to make sure we cover off.”
Who are the big names?
The celebrities will spend preparation time with teams and be ‘mentored’ by one or both race drivers before seeing how they stack up to a target time set by one of the race drivers in the mocked-up Hard Rock Stadium circuit.
Formula E initially wanted to get the cream of the influencer crop but plans formed too late to get some of the truly huge names that have astronomical follower numbers and have regularly crossed over into mainstream media.
Still, Formula E has already secured one stand-out name in former Manchester City and Argentina footballing hero Sergio Aguero. The prolific goal scorer, who retired in 2022, is known to be a racing fan and has visited several F1 grands prix and also taken part in high-profile sim races in recent years.
Some names have already been confirmed to teams, with others are still in negotiations. Among them are Brooklyn Beckham, custom car influencer Emelia Hartford, tech content creator Cleo Abram and Emily In Paris actor Lucien Laviscount.
Formula E is set to confirm some of the other celebrity names in the coming weeks before they are paired to individual teams.
What does it all mean?
Formula E likes to amplify a message of being an innovator and risk-taker. This event has a lot of those elements embedded within it and if it taps into what Formula E will bill as ‘a combined reach of over 300 million’ then surely this can only be good for the growth of the series as it gets quicker and more established.
An up-and-down relationship with big broadcasters, and a struggle to carve through to a larger number of consumers/viewers, have so far hampered the understanding of Formula E on the scale it wants to reach.
The teams are right to be nervous, though. There have been several incidents in Formula E’s history of allowing non-drivers to sample the hardware. Orlando Bloom took a front wing off a Gen1 car in 2017 at Marrakesh and last year at the Tokyo E-Prix, popular digital lifestyle digest Ladbible’s Jake Massey did likewise in a Gen3 car.
Interestingly, the official LadBible edit of that adventure only garnered 1100 views on its official YouTube channel which has 3.3 million subscribers.
In his own Formula demo at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez last January, Usain Bolt almost replicated FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s infamous Renault F1 car pitwall shunt.
It is unknown if the Gen3 Evo cars will be detuned somewhat or how much ‘track’ time they will get in Miami just yet but these details could be crucial in assisting teams with any work they may or may not have to do.
The Evo Sessions are being run as what Formula E deems as ‘a digital first event’ so will not be live-streamed but can be covered in real-time by teams. The event will also be captured by Formula E-owned and operated channels.
The Race has learned that there is also a 60-minute documentary being created by Range, which is set to be made available on ‘a global streaming platform this summer'.
The good news is that there is such a gap of inactivity in Formula E that after the March 5-6 event, the teams will have plenty of time to be ready for when the serious stuff begins again at Homestead on the second weekend of April.
Formula E has to be commended for its innovative and proactive approach to drowning out the silence of its enforced eight-week gap in its schedule.
The bigger picture could well be that should the Evo Sessions be a success and that success is measured correctly and honestly, then surely it could become a regular off-season event to bridge an often five-month gap between championship campaigns.
That will bring new challenges, especially technically for battery refreshment schedules and the like. But if Formula E is serious in its pursuit of a place in sport's Premier League then it shouldn’t have to rely on ‘Aguerooooooo’ style last-gasp winners like this creative stopgap.
