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The Formula E Teams group has a new chairman, with Andretti’s Roger Griffiths taking over from Dilbagh Gill of Mahindra. We caught up with him in Buenos Aires to find out what his plans are in his new role…
Q: How did this role come about?
A: I guess the catalyst was when Jim Wright moved from Venturi over to Mahindra. And with Dilbagh being the then chairman of the FET group, he decided that having both the secretary and chairman of FET from the same organisation was potentially a conflict of interest. Honestly, I don’t think it was because I respect both of them and their integrity, but Dilbagh decided it was time to stand down. We briefly discussed that we needed to elect a new chairman and the teams were all free to propose somebody they wanted and I guess I won by a clear majority! I hadn’t anticipated being in this position, but I received a phone call late one Wednesday afternoon from Jim saying ‘I’m pleased to congratulate you, you’re now the chairman of FET’. Honestly, all joking aside, it’s very kind of the teams to place that confidence in me to represent them the best I can when dealing with common issues.”
Q: How do you perceive the role?
A: Quite often you find that you can be more effective if you have collectively one voice from the teams; whether you’re speaking with the FIA or speaking to Formula E or some of our series partners or whoever it may be. And I’m here to represent the interests of the teams, not the interests of Andretti or Roger Griffiths. So that’s the role and I think we have found that this approach has been appreciated by both Formula E and the FIA. We’ve made our mistakes in some of our earlier dealings with them and we’ve certainly learned from those. As we’ve all grown with the championship and we all have two seasons behind us, both the FIA and FEH want to hear our opinions because we’re all stake holders in this championship.
Q: What are your thoughts on where the championship is right now?
A: Obviously, everybody is talking about what the next steps are for Formula E. With a lot of noise in the media about potential OEMs coming into the championships in the future. We are only in season three, but the next step of the championship – with the new car and battery coming in season five – is only 18 months away. So that’s front and centre on everyone’s mind. It was very encouraging to hear that everybody is aligned on certain aspects of this, particularly around costs and control of costs, so that’s key because what we need is a healthy infrastructure, a healthy eco-system. Yes, we are all competitors on the race track but we have to survive together as well. If we enter into negotiations on any item with a common position it is a lot more likely to bring success.
Q: Working collectively, where is the biggest area that you have an impact?
A: There are a few things that are important to us. A simple one is that we are talking about how the spare part supply is going to work in the future with the new car. The business model is changing. Formula E is no longer the provider of the cars, the manufacturers will be the providers of the cars to the teams. How do we want to handle the spares situation? Do we each do it individually or do we want to have a common spares programme a bit like we have today? So we’ve started those conversations. We’ve had initial discussions with the FIA, with Formula E and with SPARK to make sure that they are on board. That’s a good example of how we can collectively work together. Another one is that we all got together to discuss where the most suitable testing venue is for the pre-season test. Donington has served its purpose really well for a couple of years but as the championship has grown and we now have manufacturer test days available for many of the entrants, maybe Donington is not the right place. But it’s not as simple as saying ‘OK, we’ll just go to circuit x’ because we need to make sure we can get 40 cars there, do we have the right charging infrastructure, are there sufficient hotels around the locality? There’s a lot of collective experience from within the pitlane, so let’s see how our experience and our knowledge base and the resource of all of our people can help one of two individuals who’ve been tasked to do something on behalf of Formula E or on behalf of the FIA.
Q: Finally, Andretti has made a step up from last year, but there’s still clearly room for improvement…
A: Yes, I’d say so. I think from here forward the circuits come to us. We knew going to Marrakesh was going to probably be the most challenging of the tracks for us. The result there wasn’t great. We had a car issue with Antonio [Felix da Costa] who was running sixth and the car stopped. Robin [Frijns] made a mistake, driver error, and we probably gave up what could have been another fifth or sixth like we had in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was an amazing start, particularly when you consider what happened in qualifying and where we started. I think for us the goal is podiums. To be honest it’s going to be hard to win against the might of Renault and Buemi, but we are never going to give up trying, but we recognize that that is a big leap. We’d like to be consistently top five and on the podium as and when it happens.