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2017-18 will be the fourth season of Formula E, and the last with the original Spark chassis. The only major technical change is that engine power during the races will be increased from 170 to 180kW.

The season begins on December 2nd in Hong Kong with a double-header weekend, followed by Marrakesh a month later, a new race in Santiago at the start of February, a return to Mexico City in March and another new event in Sao Paulo on March 17th to wrap up the South American races. Beginning in April are 4 European events - a third new race in Rome, with returns to Paris and Berlin followed by the first car race in Switzerland for 63 years around the city of Zurich. The season concludes in July with the same pair of double-headers as last season, in New York and Montreal.

There is also some shaking up in the teams and drivers. Ahead of a major manufacturer influx over the next 2 or 3 years, Audi have taken over the running of the Abt Audi team, with Allan McNish in charge. Reigning champion Lucas di Grassi and Daniel Abt are retained, with Abt explicitly given the opportunity to show that he has the drive on merit instead of nepotism. Andretti have dissolved their partnership with Amlin ahead of an expected tie-up with BMW. Antonio Felix da Costa returns and is joined by BMW works driver Tom Blomqvist who replaces Robin Frijns. Dragon have also split with their partners Faraday Future, and have replaced Loic Duval with Neel Jani alongside Jerome d'Ambrosio.

The other 7 teams remain the same as far as ownership is concerned, but there are further changes to driver line-ups. Virgin replaces Jose Maria Lopez with Alex Lynn to partner Sam Bird. Jaguar have poached former champion Nelsinho Piquet, who replaces Adam Carroll alongside Mitch Evans. Piquet's spot at NIO is taken by newcomer Luca Filippi, whilst Oliver Turvey is retained. Venturi have been persuaded to sign up Mercedes driver Edoardo Mortara as Stephane Sarrazin's permanent replacement, whilst Maro Engel returns. The final change is at Techeetah, who keep Jean-Eric Vergne but have pounced on Andre Lotterer as their replacement for Ma Qing Hua. Renault (Sebastien Buemi & Nicolas Prost) and Mahindra (Felix Rosenqvist & Nick Heidfeld) remain as they were.

The three days of testing at Valencia hinted that the general order will remain largely as it was last season, with Renault, Audi and Mahindra at the top of the pile, with Virgin there or thereabouts. But there are also suggestions that NIO may have found the sort of performance that took them to the series 1 title, with Turvey setting the fastest time of all.

Montreal might be done. Failure ticket sales-wise, locals didn't like the arrangements and now its biggest proponent is no longer the mayor.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ ... -1.4381808
http://montrealgazette.com/news/local-n ... eal-moving

The new mayor ealrlier said the race could be moved to the F1 circuit but a) probably didn't know what she's talking b) right after the F1 GP they're going to start reconstruction of the pits c) it is not like FE would want to go there anyway because I don't see how they can do a short config there.

Vancouver would be perfect...

How about Trois Rivieres

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That would be a great track as well but it's far for me and there are no races in my part of the world...except IndyCar now starting next year...

I'm going to the Santiago E-Prix. Should be fun.

My girlfriend wants to go too, with our 4,5 month-old child (when the race happens). I think it's a terrible idea.

Edmonton please

Looking forward to the start of a new season, but if rumours about one team being head and shoulders above the rest is true, it could be worse dominance than Merc in F1
That's the last thing this championship needs as its trying to build its audience imo

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In that case they should create a "Fan Sandbag" vote. Like a fan boost, but where we chop off 20kW from a given team's performance if they start being too far ahead in the race.

should be standart to every motorsport series

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

https://www.motorsport.com/formula-e/ne ... 19-984377/
they said postponed but the reality is that it got cancelled not for next season, but to every other that might happen

Interlagos is in danger too

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Facebook always delivers on the tinfoil hat brigade count - this week's effort is from a guy who is absolutely convinced that Formula E represents a targeted bid by environmentalists to DESTROY ALL OF MOTORSPORT. I checked; he is quite serious.



(apparently the height of manliness is also a V8, so give up your V10s and V12s now please...)

It does quite baffle me how much old-school motorsport fans tie themselves in knots over Formula E, when in reality it's quite easy to just ignore it and focus on the series you do like

I'm not sure its unique to motorsport fans but why we continually focus on what we see as negatives instead of just making time for the things we do let ourselves enjoy and ignoring everything else is quite frustrating in my opinion

The world isn't going back to how it was when you first got into the sport, either go along with it or enjoy it, or crack out the DVDS (or VHS lol) of old races and exist there forever.

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Yep, it's pretty much that. Instead, we get people like this acting like FE fans are somehow undermining every other series, and so trying to cast them as not a 'proper' fan of motorsport.

Honestly the series targets don't seem to overlap. I think this year's Formula E season only shares one circuit with F1.

Most of the Formula E circuits are located on temporarily circuits inside major cities... locations where the race probably never could be run because those "big loud manly V8" engines would trigger too many noise complaints. ("The environment" is not the only reason electric vehicles are favored in some instances, after all.)

Formula E will grow and surpass in popularity a lot of other motorsports. Give it 5 or 10 years. Electric cars is where the future is. But it will take a while to get that snowball effect.

I don't like F E, not because it are not big V8 engines.

But the races I have watched were utterly boring, no overtaking on way too narrow courses and I don't like the fan boost principle. And on top of that there is the sound and the tyres.

I must admit I have not watched any races in 2017, so perhaps it has become better.

Punta del Este replaces São Paulo.

https://t.co/ASqloiNiJA

Nice, I loved that track. My favorite on the FE calendar. ^^

Sounds like you missed a lot of good races then. Buemi's presence in the series does make it worse though.