Motorsport is in an era of transition, as some series head off on an all-electric path and others pursue the hybridization route, driven by demands from governments and vehicle manufacturers. In this video, Roger Atkins, a specialist consultant on EVs, draws on the opinions of a range of motorsport engineers, to establish what this means for racing in the long term.
As Atkins puts it, “I ask the question…It’s 2031, can I still go and watch a Formula 1 Race?” Explaining further, the presenter says, “I ask lots of other questions about the future, as well as talking about the here and now of both Formula E and Formula 1. As a motorsport fan, I wanted to understand what was happening behind the scenes when it comes to reconciling the romance of the past with the realities of a rapidly changing world.
“I was given privileged access to some of our best and brightest minds in racing in order to give myself – and you – an inside track as to how the technology, and the business of racing, might progress in a post combustion era … in the electric age.”
His guests included such luminaries as Hywel Thomas, MD at Mercedes-AMG, HPP; Mark Preston, team principal, Techeetah Formula E Racing Team; Pierre Godof, chief engineer, Formula E Powertrain Mercedes-Benz HPP; and Paddy Lowe, co-founder and director, Zero Petroleum.
