photo by Helen - Fiercely Electric
In early June, I received an email that I had hoped for, but never expected - I had been approved to have media accreditation for the London E-Prix in July! Over the weeks leading up to the E-Prix I exchanged emails with a few teams to arrange some access to garages, but what was a big surprise was how many invitations I recieved in the few days before the race. One of these invites was from Harry, part of the PR team looking after Shell, who are supplier of e-lubricants and partner to the Nissan Formula E Team. (I covered this event in more detail over on Instagram if you want the facts and figures). I was also invited to events being hosted by Hankook, the World Championship's tyre supplier, Envision Racing (Race Against Climate Change) and ABB, but unfortunately was not able to attend these due to travel arrangements and timings. Friday was a hectic one - 4.30am alarm, leaving home before 6am to catch a 7am train out of Newcastle Central station. With delays along the way, I arrived into London Kings Cross a little later than I hoped, giving me less time to get across London to my hotel to drop my bag off. Thankfully the tube strikes which had been looming over the weekend were called off and my journey was smooth, and on arrival at the hotel was able to check in early to securely put my bag in my room. I then headed to the ExCel centre, where I needed to collect my accreditation before dashing inside to meet Harry from Shell at the back of the Nissan garage. I was introduced to Vincent Gaillardot, the team's Program Director, who discussed the partnership with Shell and the e-lubricants used on the Gen3 powertrain. It was fascinating to hear how it works, and I confess as somebody who can't even drive a car I know little about the mechanical side of cars, and probably less about EVs in general - but they do say every day is a school day! Following this session I was taken inside the Nissan garage and stood in the viewing gallery. I was given an overview of how the garage works, got to hold a previous version of a steering wheel (side note: actually rather heavy, and I was told worth 7500 euros!) and then found out the team were in the process of blowing up a whole bunch of balloons as it was their rookie driver Sacha Fenestraz's 24th birthday! Look at the cute cookie I was given too!
Once I had finished my amazing visit to Nissan, I made my way to the media centre where I had to attend a safety briefing - mandatory for me to receive the blue "non live video" vest I needed to wear across the weekend to allow me to film and photograph in certain areas. This vest didn't give me access to the photographer only areas, nor could I film/photograph the track or pit lane while 'live', but it was still an incredible level of access. Essentially, as long as there were not cars or other vehicles on track moving about, or in the pit lane moving, I could go in and see what was happening. I watched the shakedown from the sidelines in the paddock through a gap in the fence.
I met up with Benjamin from Porsche Formula E Team who gave me a tour of their garage and explained a little about what was going on at that time, taking me through to the back where Pascal Wehrlein was in a meeting with his engineers post shakedown and fully focused. Benjamin allowed me to take a few photos of the driver's helmets and gloves in their space, before I headed back out to the paddock for free practice 1 which I again saw through the fencing.
When the track action was done for the day, I made my way to the main entrance to meet up with friends to sit outside, relax for a while and recap the day.
We sat quite a while, long enough that many of the drivers left for the day after stopping for photos with fans, and long enough that our group decided to Uber Eats some pizzas to the door of the ExCel! As people were getting excited to enjoy their pizza, Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Felix da Costa of Porsche Formula E Team were leaving... Antonio was drawn to us by the delicious aroma of fresh pizza, and I chatted to Pascal for a little while about Call of Duty (of all the things in the world, this is what my brain defaulted to!) It had been a long day so shortly after that I said my goodbyes to the group and headed back to my hotel for a well earned rest.
Saturday - After having breakfast in my hotel I headed to the ExCel early to get a feel for what was going to happen during the day. It was far more structured and less demanding of my time as I simply had the scheduled track sessions and fan events to keep an eye on. I watched the practice session and qualifying from the media centre with a complimentary ice cold Diet Coke, before making my way down to the paddock for the driver autograph session which was taking place in the pitlane.
Slideshow of Saturday photos - click to expand
When it was time for the race, I headed back over to the main arena and took my seat along the start/finish straight near turn 1. The race was rather chaotic, so much happened that it'd be a whole blog by itself, including two red flags! We saw Jake Dennis get enough points to secure his place as the Season 9 Driver's Champion in front of his home crowd, while the Team Championship would roll on til the final race on Sunday.
Sunday - Since I'd heard there was a possibility of a protest from Porsche about a penalty given to Antonio Felix da Costa to drop him off the podium, I went to the ExCel's media centre very early and had some caffeine to fuel me for another long day. There were a number of updates throughout the morning, including the disqualification of NIO 333's Sergio Sette Camara so I was glued to Twitter for news. I also saw the weather forecast, which wasn't sounding promising for later, but I didn't expect the amount of rain we eventually got... I watched practice and qualifying once more from the media centre, ventured back to the pitlane for the autograph session again.
Slideshow of Sunday photos - click to expand
Since I really wanted to get access to the podium ceremony, I chose to stay in the media centre for the first part of the race - the race start of course being punctuated by red flags for the standing water around the circuit from the downpour of rain. Once we were underway, I watched around half of the race on the media centre TV before leaving to go to the paddock and wait by a gate for the pitlane to be accessible. I didn't anticipate where I'd chosen to stand being where they sent the top 3 cars through the gate to get to the podium with fireworks going off, so that was pretty awesome to get that close. I wandered through the paddock to the far end where I was able to get into the pitlane and made my way under the podium to experience one of the most surreal parts of the weekend. I saw the race podium, followed by Envision Racing being given the Team Championship trophy, and Jake Dennis presented with his Driver's Championship trophy. Celebrations started immediately, with the Avalanche Andretti team under the podium singing "we all live in a red and white machine", while being covered in gold glittering ticker tape and confetti.
Slideshow of Sunday's podium photos - click to expand
I cannot thank everyone enough for the hospitality I had at both Nissan and Porsche, as well as everyone I saw in the paddock and pitlane, NIO 333's Yiqi for her continuous encouragement, and the media centre folks who helped me when I said I'd never been in there before. I was made to feel very welcome, and no question was a stupid question. I sincerely hope that I will get such an opportunity again in the future, but if I don't, at least I can come away from this experience with fond memories.
That was amazing! Congrats