Featured image credits: @man_made_machines.
In this article, I share my perspective on the inaugural Hyderabad ePrix, where I was invited as a guest of Mahindra Racing. This includes my opinions on their Gen 3 India launch event, the India launch of their B.E range of SUVs and of course, watching the ePrix up-close itself.
At last, the inaugural Hyderabad ePrix has taken place!
These words do feel very relieving to utter considering the recent history of international events in India, but with grit and some serious work, the promoters have managed to successfully organise the biggest motorsport event in the country in almost a decade.
I remember dreaming about witnessing an ePrix in India as a curious fourteen year old. ‘Will any place in India actually have good enough roads?,’ I would wonder.
I would think of things like ‘Wouldn’t it be so cool to race alongside a beautiful water body like the Marine Drive in Mumbai or Marina Beach in Chennai with thousands of people attending?. So many of us would spend hours on Google Maps, designing potential circuit layouts across the major Indian cities on satellite view. We were all obviously dreaming.
Back then, it was so hard to imagine an event of this scale and grandeur truly come to fruition, considering the incredible political and logistical challenges involved.
But it has happened. The history books will always claim that India has hosted an ePrix – for someone who has been watching the series avidly since lap 1, that one sentence wipes out years of frustration and hopelessness.
Indian motorsport has woken up. In near perfect circumstances, we have found a promoter capable of organising a race, a government willing to support it, and fans curious to experience it. There remains a lot to be desired, yes, but let us not forget the gravity of a major international motorsport championship coming to India. No longer do we have to say “I wish we had an FIA championship to watch in our backyard”. It’s only upwards from here!
The Hyderabad ePrix was a weekend of great significance for me. I was given the honour of being invited as a guest of the home team, Mahindra Racing over the weekend and I would like to express my gratitude to the team for having me over at their first home race. We have had a long bonding that began way back at the 2014 Beijing ePrix and since then, I am not ashamed to say that in Formula E, unlike other disciplines, I do have a bit of a bias.
Thursday
You could feel the festival-like atmosphere early on the Thursday of the weekend itself. My flight from Mumbai to Hyderabad had multiple people from the paddock and excited fans heading to watch the race. The taxi drivers in Hyderabad were keen to know more about the race and the staff at the hotel couldn’t contain their curiosity about the ePrix either! Evidently, the motorsport bug had at least gotten to the people locally, if not bitten them. If communicated correctly, it truly has the potential to suck people in, but that I shall discuss in another related article soon.
The weekend kicked off in splendid fashion with Mahindra Racing’s Gen 3 India launch on Thursday evening. The grand event at the Tech Mahindra campus featured a celebration of the team’s homecoming and commitment to sustainability, with technical partners such as ZF and Tech Mahindra among others speaking at length about their tie-up, before the ‘reveal’ of the M9 Electro. It was certainly intriguing, if not funny – the car had already done 3 rounds at the point and the climax of the event was its reveal!
My confusion aside, it did present me the first opportunity to look at the Gen 3 Formula E car up close. There’s only one thing that came to mind at that point – photos can never do the race car justice, no matter how good the photographer is. The Gen 3 Formula E car may look like a paper plane in pictures admittedly, but the design in person is striking and maintains the ‘wow’ factor from the Gen 2 car but with more simplicity. You only truly realise just how small these cars are when you have a look at them in person and smaller, quite often, means better racing. Just watch the Hyderabad ePrix to know exactly what I’m talking about!
One of the most memorable parts of the event for me, personally, was the chat I had with the team principal, Frederic Bertrand, which I believe deserves its own article. On the whole, the event served a strong purpose to remind the media of Mahindra Racing’s vision of sustainability and the role of the technical partners such as ZF and Shell, who engineered the powertrain and eFluids, in truly bringing a race car to life, and it was certainly delivered in style.
Friday
Friday evening was a time of great significance for the Mahindra Group. Operating in a market where EVs are rising in prominence by the day, the group felt a need to showcase its futuristic vision with the new technologies through a new range of concept electric SUVs that already caught the eye of the industry when launched globally last year.
The B.E range of SUVs were showcased for the first time in India with much pizzazz at the Tech Mahindra campus. A longand extravagant fashion show filled with Bollywood actors and actresses preceded the long-anticipated moment, the chance to be up-close and personal with the BE.05 RallE, the XUV.e8 and the XUV.e9.
With concept cars, you can never quite comment on their features or the spec sheet. They always have a big, fat asterisk at the end and it is best to chat about it when the cars do launch onto the market.
What we can discuss though is the vision and the design, where I think the designer Pratap Bose has nailed it right on, especially with the BE.05 RallE. The look of an Extreme E-like car for the road certainly seems exciting to me, but we shall see if and when they launch on the market.
An event of this sort to announce Mahindra’s vision and intent was long overdue though and that made it a welcome arrival. If these are the type of cars we can expect to see on the road in 4-5 years time, then bring on the future!
The oncoming EV battle with Tata and other players from 2025 with the B.E range entering the market should be an exciting one to spectate and experience as a buyer.
Raceday
The day when I saw my years-old imagination turn to reality. Years later, in conversations between motorsport enthusiasts, people will ask each other if they were there for the first Hyderabad ePrix and if they plan to go the coming year too. I am so grateful to the Mahindra Racing team to help me say ‘yes’ to both these soon-to-be frequent questions within the Indian motoring community.
When the dust settles, what this event will be remembered for is the beginning of India’s Formula E years.
A sweet way to end the weekend was watching Oliver Rowland of Mahindra Racing cap off the home ePrix by finishing a superb sixth after qualifying eleventh on the grid. Some chaos aside, this could well have been a home podium, but one can sense a new air of confidence around the team. Since the start of Season 9, the results do seem to be on an upswing and there’s only more places to gain for the team.
The heat, the lack of shade and limited view from Stand 14 truly dampened a special moment
At the end of the weekend, I am left feeling a great sense of joy in knowing that I can now watch Formula E and support Mahindra Racing at home every year in my home country, but the joy does not translate into satisfaction. There is work to be done and everyone knows it.
The 30-odd degree dry heat truly left the fans and the lack of shade in any grandstand exposed. In addition to this, an unnecessary kilometre long walk from the entry gate to the stand could have been avoided by simply opening one barrier. The idea behind not doing so was most likely that fans should walk past the fan zone before moving to the stands but in the extreme heat of the day, that was just a solid dampener.
It didn’t help that there was a food shortage at the fan zone and water was short in ready supply, due to the environmentally conscious decision not to rely on plastic bottles. The fact that the view from most stands was very limited didn’t help mellow the frustrations of many on ground.
These niggles did slightly dampen what was a truly special day in my eyes – the homecoming of Mahindra Racing and the arrival of the Formula E dream in India, but I get a feeling that these are teething issues that will inevitably be sorted come next season. The promoters know it better than anyone else and they will be coming hard to solve them by next season. No one wants to deliver a positively memorable race day experience more than them.
Although with some issues, the Hyderabad ePrix was a strong step in the right direction
But to see the bigger picture at play here, we must rise above these aforementioned issues.
Starting off, however, no matter how small or shaky the first step is crucial. The Hyderabad ePrix then isn’t just a small step – it is in fact a giant leap in the direction of making India a more receptive home to motorsport and I am so grateful that I got to witness the first one along with an exciting demonstration of Mahindra Racing’s vision up close and personal.
