I want you to succeed, Formula E What happened when Formula E visited an American oval track? Miami, Long Beach, Brooklyn, Portland, and now Miami again. Well, sort of. Jonathan M. Gitlin – Apr 16, 2025 1:33 pm | 2 This chicane was to have profound consequences on the race result. Credit: Andrew Ferraro/LAT Images This chicane was to have profound consequences on the race result. Credit: Andrew Ferraro/LAT Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Cupra provided flights from Washington DC to Miami and accommodation so Ars could attend the Formula E race. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. MIAMI—A decade after its first visit to the state, Formula E returned to Florida this past weekend. The even has come a long way since that first chaotic Miami ePrix: The cars are properly fast now, the racing is both entertaining and quite technical, and at least the trackside advertising banners were in place before the start of the event this time. It's not the same track, of course. Nor is it anywhere near the Hard Rock Stadium that Formula 1 now fills with ersatz marinas and high-priced hospitality packages during its visit to the area. Despite what the b-roll helicopter shots might have led viewers to believe, we were actually an hour south of the city at a mid-sized oval track next to a landfill in Homestead. Usually, a place that hosts NASCAR races, for Formula E, there was a 2.2-mile (3.5 km) layout that used the straights and infield but not the banked corners. Formula E has begun to branch out from its original diet of racing exclusively on temporary city center street tracks, having visited Portland International Raceway in Oregon in 2023 and 2024. Despite the bucolic charm of PIR, with its easy bicycle and light rail access, enthusiastic crowd of attendees, and exciting racing, it was only a temporary patch for Formula E. The vast majority of Formula E's fans live outside the US, and Portland means nothing to them, but they've heard of Miami, I was told last year. Formula E goes roval racing. Will it be back? I doubt it. Credit: Simon Galloway/LAT Images for Formula E Made for TV While the few thousand that attended Saturday's race would have known they weren't actually in the pastel-hued metropolis, regular fans attending in person have always felt like an afterthought. At the track, the focus is on VIPs with lanyards and wristbands, sipping bubbly in the Emotion Club, Formula E's version of F1's pricey Paddock Club. Even this was sparsely attended compared to my visits to Portland in recent years or to the mosquito-infested canal by Brooklyn that was meant to be the sport's long-term American home. I'm told that Formula E wants to race in actual Miami, using some or all of F1's temporary playground. It's also talking to Phoenix, but we won't know about either of those until the sport's 2026 calendar is published next month. It would be easy to criticize Formula E for failing to return to the same place at roughly the same time each year. But it did that for several years running with the NYC ePrix, and I almost never met anyone who paid for a ticket who was there for their second time. The shame is that the Gen3 Evo cars put on an excellent show. After a couple of years of tires that were far too durable, Hankook has delivered rubber that drivers can really race with. Not that there was a massive amount of grip from the track surface at Homestead. This is the fifth US venue for Formula E in 10 years. Credit: Andrew Ferraro/LAT Images "When we go to the street tracks, it's quite slippy to begin with, because there's no rubber down and there's a lot of dust. But once we've cleaned up the racing line on those tracks, then it's quite good grip," Maserati driver Jake Hughes told Ars. "The biggest, most extreme street track probably goes to either London or Tokyo. And I would say the grip in those places feels a little bit higher than here." It’s very competitive Margins in qualifying were down to hundredths of a second, and eight different teams filled the first eight places on the grid, led by Norman Nato, now at Nissan. In the race, though, Porsche looked dominant in the way Jaguar did on so many occasions last year. António Félix Da Costa and Pascal Wehrlein controlled the race from the front, their purple and black Porsche 99x Electrics circulating a few seconds a lap slower than the absolute pace. Other drivers were content to follow in the peloton. "You can spend energy to be at the front, but then at some point you need to get that energy back," Hughes said. A Formula E car battery is 56 kWh, which is only enough energy for about 60 percent of the race distance, so slipstreaming and energy management are critically important, as is regen braking. It's a job made harder by the fact that there's virtually no live telemetry available to the engineers in the garages; instead, each lap, drivers have to update them on how much energy they have remaining. The mid-race "pit boost" charging stops were not a feature as the sport had left the 600 kW chargers in their boxes for the Miami ePrix. But Attack Mode definitely affected the outcome. Essentially an in-race power boost, every driver has to use Attack Mode for eight minutes during the race, usually split into either two four-minute deployments or two- and six-minute deployments. It's activated by driving over a pair of timing loops set away from the racing line, and bumps power from 300 kW to 350 kW. The Jaguar and McLaren to the right of the photo pass through the Attack Mode activation zone, which you can see is far off the racing line. Credit: Alastair Staley/LAT Images Gen3 Formula E cars have always been able to regenerate energy from the front axle, but this season is the first time the cars can actually send power to the front wheels while in attack mode. "So until last year, attack mode was kind of a penalty, because you couldn't use it to attack," explained Xavi Serra, head of global racing for Cupra. "You had extra power, and you were spending more energy and very difficult to overtake. Now you spend your energy, but as you said, four wheel drive, [better] tires and extra power, you use it, and then it's now a strategy tool to advance positions, whereas in the past it was not," Serra told Ars. Time to go for it On lap 14, the actual race broke out as everyone started to push at their actual pace. From single-file slipstreaming to running three-wide in a pack, it still looked like Porsche's day, until a three-car collision at the turn 11 chicane blocked the track, resulting in a red flag. When the cars returned from the pits for the final five laps, some of them had a big problem: they hadn't yet used all of their attack mode time, and there wasn't enough time left in the race to do so. Da Costa had already used all of his allocation and had been building a commanding lead when the red flag came out. Now 50 kW down on most of the cars around him, he slipped back to seventh on track. His teammate Wehrlein had to use just four minutes, and did so to good effect, keeping his car in the lead until the checkered flag. Next on track was Nato, but without time to use all of his Attack Mode, he received an automatic 10-second penalty that dropped him to sixth place. There were also 10-second penalties for Robert Frijns, Oliver Rowland, Sam Bird, and Taylor Barnard, meaning that second place actually went to Lola-Yamaha's Lucas Di Grassi. A star of Formula E's early seasons, in Miami, it looked like the younger version was back in the car as he delivered his best result in several years. The multitude of penalties also promoted Da Costa back into third place. Antonio Felix Da Costa (l), Lucas di Grassi (m), and Pascal Wehrlein (r) celebrate on the podium. Credit: Simon Galloway/LAT Images for Formula E It's easy to be cynical about Formula E, and based on the complaints I heard from other journalists in attendance, some people can't get over a lack of sound in this motorsport. But most of the sport's problems are a thing of the past, and the racing usually delivers, even somewhere like the tight and twisty confines of Monaco, where it goes next for a double-header on May 3–4. Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 2 Comments