For a man used to running 100 metres in less than 10 seconds, Usain Bolt found himself going a bit quicker than usual ahead of Formula E’s season-opener earlier this month.
The eight-time Olympic gold medal winner was the all-electric championship’s star attraction in Mexico City as he took to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez aboard the Genbeta car – an uprated version of the current Gen3 machine. All organised as part of a publicity stunt, there’s no denying that having the world’s fastest man in the world’s fastest electric single-seater certainly had a nice ring to it.
Despite needing a moment to compose himself as the claustrophobic confines of the car caused something of a minor panic attack for the Jamaican, he completed two laps before seeing what he could do across his most prolific race distance.
Given his lack of time in the car it was perhaps unsurprising when he lost control at the first time of asking, spinning the car broadside from a standing start, before posting a better run on the second effort – 5.22s to be exact, a smidge quicker than his 9.58s world record which he set with his own two feet in 2009.
At one stage in his illustrious career Bolt was one of, if not the, biggest sporting stars in the world. While his stardom might not be as prevalent as it once was after retiring in 2017 – finding himself diminished to starring in adverts for a well-known printer company recently – he remains a household name and someone who grabs headlines wherever he goes. It was this star quality which Formula E’s management was banking on to help generate exposure ahead of the new season.
Ever the showman, Bolt stated: “This is the first time I’ve ever said that the Genbeta car for me, is actually faster than me. I’ve never, ever said something is faster than me.” The remark prompted laughs from the gathered media and Formula E personnel, including championship CEO Jeff Dodds, who had joined Bolt on stage for the press conference.
The former COO of Virgin Media has only been in his new position officially since June last year, with the Mexico race his fourth event at the helm, yet in that short period of time he has already started to move closer towards his vision and put Formula E on the map.
“One of the things I talked about was to make Formula E noisier,” Dodds said in Mexico. “I think the component parts in the sport are fabulous, the performance of the cars is incredible, we’ve got great driver line-ups, great manufacturers and we race in great places.
“But the reality is not enough people know about us and engage with that and I guess in one respect I’m quite critical of that because I think there’s a window of opportunity for us to create noise and generate interest. On the other hand, we’re nine years old and we’re competing against other motorsports that are between 75 and 100 years old, so we’re trying to achieve a lot in a very short period of time.
“Alberto [Longo, championship co-founder] talked about [how] we have 350-ish million fans around the world. We saw that grow between 16-17 % last year which is great, and we’ve been experiencing growth and momentum in our fanbase in the off-season as well and I think a lot of that has come from our media expansion.
With this season likely to feature another tight championship battle on-track, series organisers know they need to capitalise on that as well as off-track promotions to grow its audience - which will be crucial for securing Formula E’s long-term survival
“Part of it is foundational, you need to have the right media deals in the right places. We don’t race in every city in the world and up to this point our product is not shown in every country in the world. So we’ve done a lot of media deals to take the product to countries where we don’t race so we can start to expose more people to it. From a marketing, PR and press point of view we’ve done a lot of planning in the off-season for marketing to start landing during the season.”
Even in the UK, there has been a change in the guard when it comes to broadcasting Formula E. The championship has previously been shown on free-to-air channels ITV, Channel 5, BBC and most recently, Channel 4 over the last nine seasons but 2024 marks the first time it will go behind a paywall with TNT Sports.
It’s an interesting strategy but one which will ensure each race is shown live and advertised prominently, something which has not always been a guarantee on other platforms in the past. Having ex-footballer turned-presenter Jermaine Jenas front the coverage is also certainly likely to appeal to people outside of a motorsport fanbase alongside the usual roll call of experts including David Coulthard and Karun Chandhok.
Dodds is all too aware of the importance of bringing in a new audience as well as making people aware of what Formula E is, creating “noise that will hopefully permeate general media, non-traditional motorsport media”. Quite what form that marketing will take remains to be seen, but it certainly started with Bolt in Mexico as an attempt to appeal to the masses rather than just the hardcore motorsport fanbase, much of which could be argued are indifferent to Formula E at best.
Formula E hits a decade in 2024 and has come a long way since its initial inception with faster cars and more races at bigger and better locations. Momentum has certainly started to build again after it came to a crashing halt in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic just a few years ago. At a time when even Formula 1’s management and teams were significantly concerned about the future of its championship, it could very well have marked the end for Formula E which scrambled to put six races together in Berlin to form a season.
Not only that, but it had to contend with losing big manufacturers in the form of BMW and Audi in 2021 and Mercedes the following season, all of which could have set the championship on a spiral into oblivion. Instead, 11 teams are on the grid this season with manufacturers including Nissan, Jaguar and Porsche, along with hugely successful motorsport entities such as McLaren and Andretti.
Drivers as well are starting to see the championship as a desirable destination as opposed to a retirement home for ex-F1 competitors trying to carve out the remainder of their careers, something which could not have been said in the early years. The fact that Jake Dennis, Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans were all championship protagonists last season, having been overlooked by F1, shows how untapped talent can flourish.
“I always say that if someone were to tell me 10 years ago, we would already be racing in 12, 13 of the biggest cities in the world with the amazing partners that we have, the amazing teams and manufacturers that joined, I would have thought they were absolutely crazy,” adds Longo.
“Becoming the fourth biggest motorsport property in the world only after F1, MotoGP and World Rally Championship, again definitely that was not something in our mind to be so successful so quickly.”
Bolt’s appearance in Mexico certainly got people talking about Formula E and that can only be a good thing moving forward. With this season likely to feature another tight championship battle on-track, series organisers know they need to capitalise on that as well as off-track promotions to grow its audience - which will be crucial for securing Formula E’s long-term survival.
As Longo adds, there is “a lot more to come, [we’re] super proud of what has happened up to now but we’re just showing the tip of the iceberg”.
