The 2023 Extreme E season kicked off earlier this month with back-to-back races in Saudi Arabia and one team that stood out from the rest of the competition was Veloce Racing.
Kevin Hansen and Molly Taylor put in a stunning effort in the opening leg of the Desert X-Prix to notch up Veloce’s maiden win, before finishing runner-up in Sunday’s second contest to put the team at the top of the standings.
The results marked an impressive turnaround for Veloce after it finished at the bottom of the championship last year, and the continuation of its efforts to establish itself in real-world racing.
Veloce is one of the biggest names in Esports, with connections to a variety of racing drivers and teams - including those in Formula 1. Veloce also has a sizeable presence in the media space, which it believes is necessary for racing teams to be commercially viable and successful.
“Instead of being an Esports business and a racing business, we are a new media and sports rights holder in what we consider growth sectors of Esports gaming and purpose-driven sport,” Veloce Racing CEO Daniel Bailey told Autosport.
“We manage anywhere between 90-100 gamers at any one time, which fuels another pillar of our Esports and gaming business, which is team operation and team ownership.
“So, in Esports we have Veloce Elites. We run a variety of Formula 1 teams' operations. We run an academy and best in class Esports teams in the Middle East called Yas Heat.
“We operate and own equity in Quadrant Esports, which is Lando [Norris'] Esports and gaming brand, which we built with him.
“There are about 40 different channels across YouTube and Twitch in our network, which are generating about 700 million views a month now from 37 million subscribers.”
The Veloce company also has a strong leadership, with Bailey - son of ex-F1 driver and BTCC race winner Julian - joined by Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne, Rupert Svendsen-Cook, Jack Clarke and Adrian Newey among others in the business.
Veloce had been keen on expanding its presence beyond the virtual realm for some time, but it was only after the launch of Extreme E in 2021 that it found a championship that provided excellent bang-for-buck while keeping costs to a minimum.
“In the real world of racing, there wasn't anything cost-effective yet relevant enough for us to build into it,” Bailey explained.
“[Then] Extreme E came along. We saw huge potential with the sustainability relevance, the gender equality elements, the strength of the media product when executed effectively, and it felt like a very good place for Veloce's first foray into the real world of sport to happen.
“And as very much a content-first product, Extreme E is an amplification of our media business.”
Veloce produced a reasonable maiden campaign in Extreme E, scoring a podium in only the second weekend in Senegal, but the team’s performance took a nosedive at the start of the second season in 2022.
The management quickly realised it needed to make wholesale changes to the squad to become competitive, and it didn’t wait until the end of the season to execute the overhaul. A new driver line-up was in place by the final round in Uruguay and several other changes were made to the operational side of the team as well, not least the recruitment of Dakar Rally winner and ski racer Luc Alphand as its team principal.
“We could tell in the middle of season 2 that our combination of trackside management and drivers was not working,” Bailey explained. “We took the decision to shake things up for the last race of the season.
“So, you would have seen in Uruguay, for season 2, we ran our new drivers Kevin and Molly. And we brought in Luc Alphand, multi-world cup ski racing winner, he’s won Dakar and is ultra-competitive racer across both skiing and importantly off-road motorsport.
“We made those changes and brought them in for Uruguay, which we wanted to do to get ourselves better set for season 3.”
The overhaul meant the team sacrificed much of the 2022 season, but the results of the labour bore fruit when the 2023 campaign got underway in Saudi Arabia this month.
Hansen and Taylor finished second on the road in the opener before being promoted to first when the Rosberg X Racing team was penalised for speeding in a slow zone.
The Veloce duo were then classified second in the final part of the double-header, finishing behind Sainz XE duo Mattias Ekstrom and Laia Sanz.
“Naturally, winning the first race was a massive achievement for us,” Bailey said.
“But after winning the first race the vibe in the camp wasn't just to get carried away celebrating. It was like, ‘right, this is a brilliant feeling, we need to normalise this, let's all pat each other on the back, say brilliant job and let's come in tomorrow and try and execute the same thing again’.
“On Sunday, we finished P2. But arguably had a more dominant run in the lead-up to the final. We won both our qualifying races, topped qualifying, came into the final.
“Kevin was running P2 behind Mattias Ekstrom when flick of an oversteer meant that he hit the pitlane speed limiter by mistake which would allow Kristofferson to get past him.
“But look, first on day 1, second on day 2, top of the championship standings, I would have definitely taken that at the start of the weekend.
“So, it was a brilliant feeling but a feeling which we want to bottle up and normalise within the team and come into every race weekend with the expectations of being competitive and also confidence in the team that we now have and our ability to now execute.”
Partnerships are important for every racing team in motorsport and Veloce has had a long-standing relationship with UK’s largest renewable electricity provider E.ON that has proved a success for both parties.
Given the main goal of Extreme E is to raise awareness about climate change, it’s only natural for Veloce to partner with a company that promotes renewable sources of energy.
“They partnered with us at the end of season 1, which then amplified into a bigger partnership for season 2,” said Bailey.
“We've grown our partnership again for season 3. We are going to be doing something specific and special around the Scotland Extreme E race coming up and they are fantastic partners, super supportive.
“If you are E.ON, in the partnership with Extreme E, through Veloce Racing you get to talk about sustainability, commitment to EV technology, gender equality, all those very important macro trends which any company should be working towards.
“We've only had positive feedback on how we've marketed our relationship and how we've amplified the content that we have created.”
