I have never been to a sporting event quite like Formula E’s Mexico City E-Prix. Full stop. The Mexican fans really brought their A-game in terms of enthusiasm and excitement for the FIA’s all-electric on-track package, and after having seen it first hand, it’s obvious why. Mexico City is an amazing city, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is an amazing track, and FE puts on an amazing event. Unlike the traveling circus of F1 or sports cars, this is a one-day full-throttle blast and the local fans really get amped up for it. Mariachi, cervezas, and whatever noise makers are the loudest, they really bring the party.
Full Disclosure: Formula E invited me to Mexico City to see their on-track product firsthand. The series paid for my flights, put me up in a nice hotel, and fed me delicious Mexican street food.
The Mexico City E-Prix is really a one-day event from a fan perspective. There’s a practice session in the morning, qualifying before lunch, and then it’s lights out for the race in the early afternoon. You’re done and back home before dinner. It’s an action-packed format that allows the series to run in city centers without disrupting workaday traffic patterns, but at a permanent circuit like Hermanos Rodrigues it’s an opportunity to really pack the enthusiastic fans in the stands and let them see a whole race weekend in about eight hours.
NEOM sucks, but the McLaren papaya livery still bangs.
I turned up to the track on Friday, a day with practically zero fan engagement, to see the cars get built up from their component parts packed in shipping containers, interview some drivers during their downtime, and check out a few shakedown and practice sessions. I could never have been prepared for the dichotomy between Friday and Saturday. All of the race cars are plugged in to a charging cable, but the fans are the ones that really bring the energy.
On Friday the paddock was calm and relaxed with everyone setting the stage for what was to come. On Saturday I felt like I was caught between the immovable object of Mexican enthusiasm and the unstoppable force of Formula E.
Let’s get into it.
Friday was a great opportunity for me to walk through the largely vacant fan zones without a gigantic hulking crowd to fight through. Several manufacturers had brought along giant displays to promote their new electric car lineups, most notably Porsche, Nissan, and BYD.
For obvious reasons, Porsche had a ton of new electric Macans and Taycans around the circuit. In partnership with the series, Porsche provides vehicles for the safety car, the extraction team, and medical team to get around the circuit, so it makes sense that fans would be able to get hands-on and face-to-face with the real thing. This Macan looked particularly good in green. Get your Porsches in a good color, folks. Don’t be boring.
Nissan had a totally wild display with areas for fans to take selfies, learn more about the company’s products, and a heap of incredible electric concept machines from recent years. My favorite, the carbon monocoque Leaf RC NISMO from 2018, was on full display in a new livery to match the company’s race-winning Formula E e-4ORCE 05 car.
Another cool machine on display from Nissan was the Ariya Open Wheel concept from 2021, which apparently doesn’t share any actual parts with the Formula E car, and is powered by the standard AWD powertrain from the Ariya SUV. I’d love this one as a daily driver, how about it Nissan?
Speaking of reasonable daily drivers, Nissan’s third and final electric concept, the Hyper Punk, could probably be built today and sell like hot cakes. Why don’t we get cheerful and futuristic designs like this instead of the dystopian Cybertruck nightmare?
I’ll talk a lot more about BYD in an upcoming blog, but the Chinese EV company is out in full force at the Mexico City E-Prix. Not only are these cars fucking everywhere on the streets of Mexico City, but they’re taking over basically every country but the U.S. at the moment. This little guy, dubbed the Dolphin Mini, was my favorite, and not just because of its eye-searing highlighter yellow paint.
The on-track action on Saturday was as hot and unpredictable as ever. Porsche locked out the front-row in an incredible show of strength during the head-to-head shootout-style qualifying session with Pascal Wehrlein getting his fourth pole at the circuit, but strategy and a bit of luck put Nissan’s Oliver Rowland on the top step in a nail-biting final ten laps. I am convinced that this is the best on-track product in racing right now. It’s so ridiculously fast-paced and competitive that nothing can match it. IndyCar gets close, but doesn’t quite have the juice. Formula E’s Gen 3 Evo race car package is the culmination of 11 seasons of hard racing, and the tech is finally where it needs to be for a serious FIA world championship.
To match that on-track excitement, the Mexican fans pulled out all the stops. How about an authentic mariachi group getting the paddock buzzing on Saturday morning? These folks were incredible, and obviously dressed to the nines.
Here was my view of the fan zone from the third floor media center between qualifying and race sessions. Tens of thousands of people flooded the track for the day, and enjoyed a close battle and fun racing.
Everything about the E-Prix was given a Mexican flavor. Even the VIP shuttles from the parking lot to the Emotion Club were little electric-powered vintage-looking buggies. Too cool.
I got the opportunity to watch the qualifying session from inside the Porsche garage, and it was a really incredible opportunity given that Porsche went head-to-head in the final shootout to secure a front row grid lockout. Each time their drivers put down a faster lap than anyone else, a very German round of reserved clapping rang out. Meanwhile team boss Florian Modlinger gave his typical show of over-the-top excitement with a little jump and a fist pounding on the table top.
The grid walk was a great way to get up close and personal with the cars. The teams are very protective about photos of their cars while they are in the garages, because the competition is so tight they don’t want to give away any secrets. For example, Maserati told me I couldn’t take any pictures of the Tipo Folgore race car with its wheels off. Porsche said the 99X Electric was off-limits even with the wheels on, but I took a few anyway… Don’t tell anyone.
The Lola Yamaha team is relatively new to the series, working with ABT Sport. ABT used to run the factory Audi program, but Audi ended that to run Dakar, and then bowed out of Dakar to run F1. It’s exciting to see the Lola name back in a top-flight open wheel series.
One of my favorite things about the Formula E paddock is that all of the teams get their spares from a little FIA-run parts counter. If you bang up a front wing during qualifying you can just run down the pit lane with your Apple Pay at the ready and buy another one. By having common parts among every car, the series reduces its carbon footprint because it doesn’t have to ship containers full of proprietary parts around the world. Similarly each team is only allowed two sets of tires per round, compared to the twenty sets of tires per car used in a Formula 1 race weekend.
I’ll talk a lot more about this in a future blog, but Formula E is planning to run in-race charging during select rounds of the season this year, and each of the cars has a charge port at the back of the rollover structure. The 600 kW charging capacity will add 4 kWh of capacity into the batteries during a mandatory 30-second pit stop, which should allow drivers to push even harder and worry less about battery management in the closing stages of the race. I don’t know if the series really needed another piece of strategy to throw at teams in 2025, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out when it debuts later in the season. It was supposed to make its competition debut last year, but the series decided to shelve it until after the Evo updates.
Hey, an Audi A1! I love these little guys.
Man, what a whirlwind weekend. I’m so glad I finally got an opportunity to see Formula E first hand, and I hope I’ll get back to see it again soon. Miami is only a few weeks away.
