until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
The Gen3 Formula E car will run in public for the first time at next week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, with Nick Heidfeld taking Mahindra’s new M9Electro up the hillclimb course.
Formula E teams began to receive their significantly faster, lighter and more powerful 2023 cars for their own testing programmes last month.
The series had already conducted 3500 miles of private testing with the prototype of the Spark-built machine before unveiling it ahead of the Monaco E-Prix at the end of April.
Last week Porsche became the first to reveal images of the car in action when it issued pictures of its shakedown, with Jaguar and NIO 333 also subsequently doing so.
Mahindra conducted its first test with the car on Thursday before announcing it would use it for its traditional annual Festival of Speed appearance.
Long-time Formula 1 driver Heidfeld raced for the team in FE for three seasons then stayed on in an advisory role after stepping out of the cockpit in 2018.
He has strong Goodwood pedigree, as his 41.6-second run in a McLaren F1 car in 1999 – when he was the team’s test driver – stood as a record until being beaten by Volkswagen’s electric I.D. R Pikes Peak car 20 years later.
