Extreme E

Associate
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10 Sep 2009
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137
Found it hard to get into - The one I watched the lead car created a huge plume of sand forcing the cars behind to slow, just seemed like watching a rally but in a big open space
 
Soldato
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The cringe is so strong... I've tried to watch it a few times through the season but I find it difficult to watch. The cars and racing itself have potential but there is a lot of the artificial cringy nonsense that makes FE unwatchable.
 
Soldato
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I attempted to watch it last weekend, but couldn't get into the first qualifying race. When I watched the next one, the drivers changed, it was a race out of the change area, and they cut to interviewing one of the drivers who just got out. They had one lap left of the race (Think it was a total of 3), and they choose to show that instead. I switched it off.
 
Soldato
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22 Nov 2006
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23,346
Its more interesting than other EV racing (which is just boring). I think racing going electric is going to kill the sport though as it just has no emotion, its slow, short, and the noise is horrible. There have been a few attempts/formats now and people just arent interested.
 
Soldato
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Castle Anthrax
It’s not a problem with electric racing as such, it’s a problem that affects most attempts to start a new formula. In general people watch and enjoy a specific type of racing because they have always watched it and because of the emotional attachment that comes with that. In most race series nowadays the actual racing is awful but people watch because they want to see the teams and drivers they like overcome those that they don’t. A new series has no viewers with that level of emotional investment and ends up trying all manner of daft gimmicks to try and attract them before eventually interest drops off and they die on their arse. I think once established series start adopting electric drivetrains they wont see the same problems with viewer engagement that the ‘new’ series do
 
Soldato
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23,346
It’s not a problem with electric racing as such, it’s a problem that affects most attempts to start a new formula. In general people watch and enjoy a specific type of racing because they have always watched it and because of the emotional attachment that comes with that. In most race series nowadays the actual racing is awful but people watch because they want to see the teams and drivers they like overcome those that they don’t. A new series has no viewers with that level of emotional investment and ends up trying all manner of daft gimmicks to try and attract them before eventually interest drops off and they die on their arse. I think once established series start adopting electric drivetrains they wont see the same problems with viewer engagement that the ‘new’ series do
Electric is fun for the drivers but not spectators, like go karting.
 
Caporegime
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19 May 2004
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Nordfriesland, Germany
Anyone watching this? Had heard about it but not watched any yet.

Watched the first couple of races, enjoyed some of it, some of it was meh. I just never really got into it, and on top of F1 and Formula E I guess I just didn't seem worth committing the time to. I think it got enough interest to get another season; maybe it'll bed in after a while.

Electric is fun for the drivers but not spectators, like go karting.

Formula E is great for spectators. I really enjoyed watching it live.
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Nov 2006
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Yep its too gimmicky. Going to the local track to watch a race is more fun than FE. They are trying to make it a big event but there really isnt much interest and the cars dont really work on proper tracks.
 
Soldato
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18 Oct 2002
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The problems I see are the cars don't have the range to do more than a few laps (I hear this is a cooling issue and the cars aren't actually being let fully off the leash), which makes it hard to get into, there is also the issue where there are only 5 races in a reason due to everything floating about on a boat which again, makes it hard to get into, its not really the sort of series where you get a lot of people going to watch it at the actual event itself, its all on TV, makes it hard to get into...

When the Extreme-H series is launched, this will run alongside the Extreme-E stuff so might make things a bit more interesting, but probably not enough to get a huge increase in viewership.


That said, because it's new and all of the teams are all in the same boat the comradery is pretty good, to see all of the mechanics chucking spares at each other and helping out, drivers are all pretty approachable and its all a bit new to everyone, but you don't see that on the TV, you also don't see that its ran to TV schedules which means stupid track hours lol..
 
Associate
Joined
1 Dec 2015
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1,194
I watched a couple but didn't continue watching.

I found the coverage hard work. Lot's of talk and not enough information.

They seemed to be very wary of damaging the cars and it felt like a short endurance race quite often.

I might try again this year. When the drivers could push the cars looked quite exciting and difficult to control.

I would like much more technical info and less fluff.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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Leicestershire
Yeah the cars are overly sensitive, but only in certain incidents, M(R)olly Taylor has literally rolled a car twice, landed on the wheels and then continued racing, yet Johan Kristoffersson hit the ground hard after a jump and his car shut down at Greenland last year, hopefully, they'll make them a bit harder and let them off the leash a bit more this year, we'll see, races are changing this year due to Putin so we'll see if Spark can use that time to make things better...
 
Soldato
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Leicestershire
Did anyone catch the latest race here in Chile?

They've changed the format slightly so rather than one long lap each the drivers are doing 2 laps each of a shorter track.

Think from a TV POV its probably the best one yet, although ITV had it on a delay and didn't show it until nearly midnight so if anyone that wanted to watch it , and also follow Extreme-E on social media knew the results before they had seen the race, not sure why ITV chose to do that, probs low viewer figures I imagine...
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Oct 2003
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Chengdu
"Extreme-E"? :/
I feel like a grandad reading this title. Things like "fan boost" and "attack mode" mentioned in another post just make it sound like a computer game.

The Extreme-E cars definitely look decent though!
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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6,672
Location
Leicestershire
Yeah I'm not a fan of some of the more 'gimmicky' things..

It has been funny today though, but as I'm actually here and the show doesn't go live for a while I'll not spill the beans, but one interviewer made me actually lol..
 
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