After nine months, ten cities and eleven rounds, Nelson Piquet Jnr has been crowned the inaugural Formula E Drivers Champion! It has been a roller-coaster season that started in Beijing last September, swept through cities such as Buenos Aires, Miami and Monaco, before finishing off in Battersea Park for the London ePrix. ITV have just finished their final programme of the inaugural season – potentially their final live Formula E broadcast, given that we do not currently know the destination of season two’s rights.
The first season has come to an end, and as always The F1 Broadcasting Blog wants your opinion on the inaugural season. What did you think? What went well, what did you enjoy about Formula E? Did you enjoy the commentary line-up, along with ITV’s own coverage with Jennie Gow as presenter? And what disappointed you about Formula E’s opening song? What should be changed about Aurora Media’s host broadcast coverage?
As always, your thoughts are welcome, with the best opinions forming part of a new blog post in around a month from now.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
Great fun..
Loved the entire season and the TREMENDOUS commentary by Dario and Jack
So much fun to listen to.
I absolutely loved the 1st season of the Formula E. It breathes fresh way to the sport and enhances where motor sport needs to go. Like Formula 1.
Brilliant, great 1st season.
Awesome season! Can’t wait for next year
Excellent first season. Really enjoyed it. With Blancpain Endurance, WEC, Australian GT, individual races like the Bathurst 12 hour, it’s been the best year for motorsport for ages. All of those series have shown innovation on the track and in terms of social media interaction.
F1? Ho ho ho.
Light beer.
Herbal cigarettes.
Tofo.
Flipflops.
Rollerblades.
Man buns,
Formula E.
how did Formula E get on your shopping list?
This was a procession. Battersea park completely wrong venue. No room to overtake and it’s trashed the park in the process. There is no way there were 30,000 people there today or yesterday. If there were 5,000 I’d be surprised.
Really enjoyed it. Surprisingly great and close racing. Really hope ITV keep it and if they do they need to be live at the track rather than studio, at least for European races. Calendar needs to be looked at. Get rid of the large gaps between rounds and interest can really build.
Loved:
The close racing
Hated:
The sound
Meh:
Jennie Gow
Loved: Almost Everything
Hated: Arseholes who kept on moaning and whinging about the speed and sound.
I thought it was an amazing season! Cant wait for S2!
ITV need to do more with their coverage. At least present the first race, last race and all European races from the track. Show more covergae on ITV, so like, Practise live on ITV.com, Quali on ITV4, and then the race on ITV, with highlights on ITV4/ITV at least for all euro races and the first one.
I felt there was too much race “build up”, with no development and little in the way of news to report (a few driver changes), they could have cut this down. Similarly the guests in the studio were of little importance. Just some on track grid walks would suffice.
I went to the race in London on Saturday, managed to position myself just past the starting lights, but with no idea what was going on due to no TV screen I watched a few laps to get an idea of the sound and speed they were going then retired to a screen by the solar panels. The music was too loud and awful, I appreciate some people will like Sudo-house music, but I don’t, and I’m 32… Perhaps I’m not the target market?
I’ve enjoyed the racing a lot, it’s been close and a shame Battersea was not wider, perhaps the Olympic park would have been better? Have to see how ROC goes there.
£16 for the ticket was cheap, the (not so) grandstands would have been a waste of money, I’d have been happy to pay £5 for wifi to watch the race on my iPad and been able to sit on a grass bank of which there were some on the north side of the start finish straight.
I think this has turned more into a review of Battersea than the season in general. I just hope ITV keep the rights for next year. I watch all the races except Moscow, ITV catchup didn’t seem to have it and I only just realised the races are on the app.
Great first season though.
I have really enjoyed the first season and I hope that the series develops and grows. I too think that the London race was in terms of track and facility poor in relation to the other races but I guess where else could you put it within the capital. As an avid follower of F1 which following SKY and the BBC sell out deal as someone rightly put we are left with half a book and my interest has wained….so Formula E don’t sell out to Sky develop this sport on every level and it will grow. Good luck next season im in!!
The on-track action has been very good because it has been more pure than F1, no DRS etc. However they had ERS and fan boost. The commentary has been awful from Jack Nicholls as he gets to excited easily, he’s trying to mimic Murray Walker and it doesn’t work. Overall, the opening season has been a great, but Formula E will never rival Formula 1 – still the pinnacle of motor sport. The thing with F1 in recent years is the incapability of listening to the fans because Ecclestone is more bithered about money in his pockets than creating great racing. Listen to the fans, no gimmicks, more purity and equal chassis, gear boxes and engines.
Itv did a decent job. Too much waffling on overall. There was no need for such large build ups for each race. The calendar needs tightening too. Large gaps are never good. The on screen graphics generally worked well, taking good elements from lots of series and merging them together. Jennie Gow developed through the year and was decent. Great, enthusiastic commentators helped too. I thoroughly enjoyed every race I saw, which was most of them. Someone else has said the racing was purer, but I disagree: how can favouring any driver with the fan boost, no matter for how little, be pure racing?!
I said it was purer than current Formula 1, not that it was pure racing. It is just as fake as all motorsports now-a-days, nobody understands that health and safety amd stupid gimics have killed motorsport, follow F1 from the 1980s and the racing was scary and the purist form of motorsport.
The two things I liked most about the series is 1, it’s currently leaning towards the drivers making the difference. Something di Grassi confirmed, no one had a car or engine advantage it was purely down to driver skill if you wanted to win.
2, aerodynamics didn’t kill overtaking and we had close racing even on the tightest of street circuits.
Jennifer Gowe was very average and the build up was long and dull – what’s important though is good racing, the series had that.