"I want a team to sign me because I'm their best option to get results, not because I'm the disabled guy."
August 19 2018 will always be the date that Robert Wickens remembers as the one that changed his life.
A promising junior category career including a Formula Renault 3.5 title led to a race-winning Mercedes DTM stint, but it was his 2018 full-season call-up to IndyCar with what was then Schmidt Peterson Motorsports that seemed destined to really launch the rest of his career.
The incident at Pocono Raceway that left him paraplegic was undeniably tragic. But Wickens' desire to be a racing driver never deviated afterwards.
It took four years of physiotherapy and working with teams, but in 2022 he made his full-time return as a professional driver with a full season seat in the Michelin Pilot Challenge, courtesy of Bryan Herta Autosport.
A year later, he and team-mate Harry Gottsacker won the TCR category drivers' championship showing that, despite the accident, Wickens' raw speed and talent behind the wheel hadn't gone anywhere.
It's something Wickens is ready to keep showing the world, his eyes now scanning the possibility of obtaining a Formula E seat in the future.
At Portland in June, Wickens talked to The Race about his handful of laps in an adapted Gen3 car, a run he said was "never an exhibition".
"Frankly I'm too old and impatient to do something for fun anymore," said the 35-year-old. "I feel like I'm doing everything with my career for a purpose and here it is no different."
Wickens' run in the car was brief but it left him with a taste for more. It's a plan that also has the backing of Jeff Dodds, CEO of Formula E.
Giving fair opportunity to a diverse range of talent is a topic close to Dodds's heart. He's the chair of the 'Valuable 500', a venture set-up to work towards ending disability exclusion.
"Robert's spirit is remarkable and he's got bags of talent that he is using to continue a career he loves," Dodds told The Race.
"What I want to see now and in the future is drivers like Robert competing on merit at high levels of racing. Inclusive sport is a must for me. These stories are so human and inspiring that they deserve to be told and continued.
“This run isn’t just for fun. It’s part of something, and Robert has the tenacity to do special things in this car and potentially future cars. It’s exciting.”
Wickens went into the laps at Portland thinking exactly the same as Dodds. Apart from meeting up with old rivals including Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne, whom he beat to the 2011 Formula Renault 3.5 series title, Wickens was completely focused on what he'd be doing on track in the runs which were conducted by Formula E Operations.
"I want to use this as an evaluation as a career opportunity," he said.
"Come November, when Formula E is doing the rookie tests in Valencia, hopefully I'm considered with any of the teams on the grid to get an equal shot at a race seat to anyone else they're evaluating."
Since his return to competitive racing, Wickens has been looking for a series that he can race in, but even before 2018 Formula E had been on his radar.
The elite level of the electric series, something only growing as more manufacturers commit to Gen4 and the four years that generation cycle will contain (until 2030), is something that has always impressed the Canadian.
"It's unique in its own ways," Wickens commented. "But the competition is there and you see it from so many different winners, from the little amount of repeat champions, it's so hard. It's what I love.
"Any driver in any car on any given weekend has a decent shot at winning, so, for me, it's always something I've looked at closely.
"I find it fascinating; I love the strategy of how drivers have to manage everything, with the help of the team, of course, but it's really up to the drivers on how they run their race and how they plan it ahead of time.
"You're never just in the moment, you're constantly thinking ahead, which is something that I felt like I've always done quite well in my career."
Wickens' Portland outing was not the first time he'd had experience with a Formula E car. In 2020, he was brought into Venturi by Toto and Susie Wolff to trial an adapted simulator, transferring the throttle and brake pedals onto the steering wheel, akin to what he races in the Michelin Pilot Challenge.
"I went over to Monaco; I think I did three-to-four days on the sim and just got to know a Formula E car from a virtual perspective," he explained.
"For me, getting them as competitive as possible with the hand controls, with the systems that we made for quali power and stuff like that, was a bit of a challenge, but once we got into race simulations and it was down to energy management, I was actually very competitive.
"It was the braking feel; what we use to create the brake was the paddles like what we're using here, but getting the feedback on where the threshold was on the brake, it was basically off muscle memory and the travel of the paddle and not the hydraulic resistance that an able-bodied person would feel with their foot.
"I had a hard time maximising the brake zones because I would always over-brake and lock and have issues, or then not brake enough and go way too quick into the corner.
"It was always that middle ground, and I had a hard time pushing flat out, but then once you eliminate the braking and there was a lot of regen and stuff with that car, suddenly I was right on pace.
"I thought that was really encouraging."
One aspect of Formula E that is beneficial for paraplegic drivers is the brake-by-wire system, which makes the hand control adjustment less disruptive than it would be in some other series such as IndyCar.
Working with Spark, FEO pulled together the adapted GenBeta car that was originally used for the successful Guinness World Records indoor speed attempt in 2023. Wickens hopes it is the first iteration of a concept that he can be involved in developing in the future.
"It's never going to be perfect right away," he says.
"We've had some meetings with the FIA and Formula E and with Spark too to kind of explain what they've done and I gave some feedback on what I've learned and on what I would like to see.
"Just simple things like if I want the throttle on the left side and the brake on the right side because in my Hyundai TCR car and IMSA, that's what I end up doing because I'm using the throttle with my left hand because I'm upshifting with my right hand.
"Formula E obviously does not change gears, but I've got a great feeling now with my left hand for throttle that I kind of just might as well just keep that the same. Kind of backwards to your feet, but it works for me.
"The important thing is this is hopefully just the first iteration of the system that I would hopefully use in the future."
In terms of prospects of getting a proper Formula E test drive, even as early as next season, Wickens is hopeful but realistic in his expectations.
"There's definitely teams that I've been in talks with from a casual or formal manner," he reckons.
"I've been fortunate enough to live a life that I have friends or colleagues or former engineers or team principals of various people in various places. A lot of them know what my ambitions are, but it's always been how we take this first step and that's what [the Portland test] is.
"I want to do a comparable job for myself as a competitor that when I'm leaving the track tonight I can have my head held high and know that I didn't leave an opportunity behind me. That's the thing, I feel like in my junior career I had to maximise every opportunity I've ever had because frankly if I didn't impress in an opportunity, there was no other opportunity.
"Maybe not as intense, because a lot of things still have to take place, but I think doing a good job here would open the door for possibly a rookie test and then once I get there, that's where you really have to do the work.
"But then also, the series is so competitive that there are no freebies. I need to excel in the rookie test in a way where the team wants to sign me because I'm their best option to get results, not because I'm the disabled guy."
