The 2014-15 Formula E season continues through South America, stopping in Argentina for the Buenos Aires ePrix!
The race marks race four of the nine round season, the unofficial halfway stage of the season. I say unofficial as, following this race, the championship goes on a two month break, returning in March from Miami on the same weekend as the Australian F1 Grand Prix. The reason for the large gap is because the round in Rio, scheduled originally for early February, failed to materialise. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt as this is season one, but the calendar has to be paced better for season two. Eleven or twelve races, with two or three week gaps, would be better for the 2015-16 season.
On location is the usual team of Nicki Shields, Jack Nicholls and Dario Franchitti, with Jennie Gow in the ITV Sport studio alongside guests to be confirmed as of writing. If one of your New Year resolutions was to watch a Formula E race, then you’ll be happy to learn that ITV4’s coverage has no adverts during the race itself, so you don’t miss a thing. There are plenty of adverts during the pre and post-race coverage, but this is a good compromise in my opinion.
Formula E – Buenos Aires (online via FIAFormulaE.com)
10/01 – 13:25 to 14:10 – Practice 2
10/01 – 14:45 to 16:10 – Qualifying
Formula E – Buenos Aires (ITV4)
10/01 – 18:00 to 20:30 – Race
11/01 – 11:00 to 12:00 – Highlights
As always, I’ll update the schedule if anything changes.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
Have I missed your reporting of the Punta del Este E Prix ? I would be very interested to see what this race achieved in UK broadcast terms following the two events in Asia. JRW
Punta del Este rated above Malaysia, but below Beijing disappointingly. Will probably put a piece up after Argentina looking at the numbers so far.
Ok, many thanks
Well the second half of the race was all action – I wonder if they’re actually missing a trick with the long lead in? For pace and atmosphere they could get it down to 30mins or at the most 45mins. I suspect they may actually be losing viewers who click over and get bored – they need to get a prominent countdown clock on screen anyhow.
Unfortunately BARB is so bad compared to say the american ratings system you can’t look at these issues say by checking the quarter hour ratings – and in fact BARB is a terrible system for looking at minority sport/channel ratings generally. Might you do an article on that?
Of course the opposite issue is that ITV are trying to squeeze as much coverage out of free rights rights as possible.
With BARB you can analyse the five minute and quarter hour breakdowns, so that comment is not true at all.