VALENCIA, Spain — Pre-season testing of the new Gen3 race car concluded in Valencia where 22 drivers from 11 teams in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship ran their first laps in the new race car.
The Gen3 will make its competitive debut in the 2023 Hankook Mexico City E-Prix on January 14, the opening race of Season Nine. Through five days of testing in Valencia, drivers completed a combined total of 5,128 laps.
On the final day of testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, the top five drivers all went half-a-second quicker than the best time previously recorded by the Gen2 car. Maserati MSG Racing’s Maximilian Guenther set a Formula E testing lap record of 1:25.127.
“The Gen3 offers different challenges with regen on the front axle now and 600kW total front and rear,” Guenther said. “The braking feel is different and even more variables can be controlled on the software side together with your engineers – the possibilities of this is pretty exciting.
“The car will be fast on the streets because you have a lot more power – 100 kilowatts more, up from 250kW in Gen2 – and we’ve got different tyres with different characteristics to the previous ones. All in all it’s a great challenge and the car looks very aggressive. I’m enjoying my experience in it so far.”
Drivers from teams including TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team, Maserati MSG Racing, NEOM McLaren Formula E Team and TCS Jaguar Racing were testing the Gen3 on track together for the first and only time before the Mexico City event.
“We can expect a bigger difference but that will come with us exploiting the car better – you will see bigger differences on targets in the race and on target laps because the car is effectively a lot more efficient,” Edoardo Mortara said. “There’s a lot to discover. We were at the maximum with the Gen2 car last year with software that was exploiting the entire performance available after years of working with those cars and powertrains. We’ve got a lot to learn and there’s a lot more to come.”
A smaller, lighter chassis and an additional front powertrain adding 250kW to the 350kW at the rear are among the many technological developments of the Gen3 race car, which is capable of a top speed of 200mph / 322kph.