"My steering wheel just came off" 😱 | Tokyo E-Prix Team Radio 

Jake and his engineer are such a vibe

And yet....

As it turned out, it wasn't fine

So, Sam, is it fine???

i absolutly love the refrence at 4:04

Were those not Kimi Raikonnen? At least the "for what?" that was definitely Kimi. I forget the other one

Karma

Laney! Yeah he’s lovely!

oh thank god I really thought I was the only one

I think this is just a risk that happens in any open wheel racing series, though all others have a little bit of that in any crash. When the wheels hit something, you're not going to be able to hold it. If you know you're going to crash, let go of the wheel and grab your shoulders.

Well it's not just FE. Remember Ricciardo broke his hand from a frontal crash

Definitely lack of wheel covers don't help. I also think having that front motor just makes the steering even heavier which probably makes the kickback on the wheel worse. I think they really need to think about bringing wheel covers back. It would improve the series in many areas. Gen 4 they also have power steering coming which should also help these issues, but that's still 2 years away.

@@lewis8552 They removed wheel covers because drivers kept bumper car'ing each other with minimal damage. I'm not sure you can have a wheel cover strong enough to reduce steering wheel jerk but still discourage nudging.

Pricktum brings media attention, and he showed speed on occasions other than being a prick

Hard to leave the space when the track is relatively narrow compared to F1 street circuits other than Monaco.

@@ChadSimplicio it's understandable when it's 3 wide, but they are colliding even when it is just 2 wide, and like not even twice or thrice, there's like 8-9 collision in this video alone

When it's as close as it is, incidents are just inevitable. Especially with all the backing up due to the energy saving games being played. This track also doesn't help. Last race in Sao Paulo was wider and the racing was better for it for example.

The idea of FE is more city tracks, because they're way quieter and no exhaust fumes. Also, efficiency. They did do car swaps in the first few seasons, but it was intended from the start to limit how much battery energy they have throughout the entire race day.

FE are mostly city circuits but the tightness of them varies. This is on the tighter end like final round at London. Next race is at Misano which is a normal circuit and will be completely other end of the scale for FE. Monaco after that which is back to a more typical FE track. Then Berlin which is on airfield and pretty wide, then two more circuits at Shanghai International(shortened version of the f1 circuit) and Portland Indycar circuit.

@@lewis8552 good to hear. I love EVs but this is nothing compared to F1. It would be great to see some straights where they can hit 300+km/hr

@@yggdrasil9039 Unfortunately they don't really have the battery capacity to sustain super long straights, even if they can hit around 180 mph (~290 kph). A second part of the reason of city tracks is a lot of corners to keep overall speeds down, and regen braking to encourage working on recharging efficiency.

@@Appletank8 Yes, that's true, and I understand that these are constraints, but if FE is just going to stay within constraints then there is unlikely to be much technological innovation because there is no challenge to do so. Nothing against some city races, but if FE wants to challenge F1 then they need to solve those constraints so EV race cars can handle long straights. That will come with increasing battery tech, but in the interim maybe some kind of battery swap tech could be used, or even better, inductive charging via the race track itself. That will cost money, I understand, but maybe start with battery swaps. F1 cars have to pit stop for tyre changes, it's not a big shift to a quick battery swap mid-race, with cars allowed as many as they like. Another thing to innovate is gearing in EVs. There's no innovation there (aside from something from Porsche) and it always strikes me that an IM spinning at 40k RPM is not efficient, hence the poor acceleration at higher speeds and big drain on the battery. This would be something for the engineers to work on if they were presented with that challenge. Which currently they're not.

They intentionally don't start with enough energy to finish to force energy saving. If the drivers could go flat-out for the entirety of the race it wouldn't lead to as much action on track. Forcing energy saving leads to differences in strategy leading to more action on-track. Also, F1 also has fuel (energy) and tire saving as well.

It’s funny you mention endurance racing, in 2022 and 2023 there were EVs racing the 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race (against gas cars) but they had quick-change batteries, they swapped batteries faster than gas cars could refuel with gasoline. Formula E should have quick-change batteries then they could do longer races.

@@TimKoski I understand formula E, I’ve been following it since it’s inception, I’d have to disagree with the idea that it’s more exciting when they don’t have enough charge, if they could run flat out it’d be a lot more entertaining and the drivers would I think enjoy it more. I’m also thinking that as electric road cars are getting quite a bashing right now for range anxiety/charging it might be better if formula e could avoid such issues. I’ve followed F1 too since the 1980’s, the fuel tanks can take more fuel than they usually run with, they don’t brim them to save weight, I can’t remember the last race where the front runners ran out of fuel, I know it’s happened but usually if there’s a fuel issue it’s because they haven’t left enough for testing post race. I appreciate your comments, I guess it’s just a matter of how you see racing.

@@jpe1 That'd be cool, but I think (in my unqualified opinion) there's no way it'd be allowed unless the changes were in the Garage and away from the pit lane

@@Skeejus I don’t think there is any legitimate safety concern, at least not with a well-engineered system. Here’s an example pit stop battery swap for EVSR at Thunderhill ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--3dmXA3JIWI.html

It’s fun, what can I say