we started a Formula 1 team. They thought we were idiots, totally crazy.”
Mark breaks off our chat to bid goodbye to some Japanese guests and casually mentions to me that they are very keen to have a Japanese race in Tokyo.
“It would be mental, wouldn’t it?” he
laughs with the very excitement of the thought.
“My pitch,” the owner of a composites business based in Oxfordshire tells me, “is that the future is in the mega cities of the world, the Tokyos, the Beijings. That’s where the money is. It’s not in Oxford. Those cities are all about urbanisation. You have to do something different. The good thing about Formula E is that it is heading to where the money is. If the money for the car companies is in those places, then the money has to come to the series.”
Mark feels it will take three to five years of the series before one car is able to last the full race distance, although there are manufacturers who are very confident that this will be possible within three years. “If we had F1 levels of budget, I reckon we could do it quicker,” he said.
For Mark, the key difference between Formula E and Formula 1 is that the former is not about the chassis or aerodynamics but about the new drivetrain technology.
“From the investment point of view, you only want to invest in something that’s going to be new.”
“We would still like to get a manufacturer backing the team. You’ve seen a few manufacturers floating around. We want them to come in otherwise there just isn’t enough resources. We’re talking to the manufacturers.”
Therein lies the issue for the teams – the question of allocating resources to develop their own powertrain once the rules are relaxed in year two.
“It’s the FIA’s plan to make it interesting,” said Mark.
Many thanks to Eli Solomon of Rewind Magazine for reproduction of text for this atory.