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There can’t be many endeavours in the sporting world more complicated than organising a street race. There’s the challenge of identifying and securing an appropriate venue, followed by navigating the relevant local authorities and the mountains of paperwork. Once that’s done, all that’s left are the logistical wrestling matches associated with actually creating a race track in the middle of a city and then taking it down again, all at the minimal possible inconvenience for locals. Street races are a crusade only for the brave.
So what happens when a city is preparing to host two different racing events on the same public roads on different weekends? Frankly, a lot of cities probably wouldn’t even entertain the idea. But Long Beach, California, is not like other cities, which is why it’s the only place where you can see Formula E and the IndyCar Series using the same bit of track, laid out in the shadow of the iconic 1930s ocean liner the Queen Mary, just a couple of weeks apart.
Double the racing might seem like double the complications. According to those responsible for pulling it all together though, the reality is very different.
“The track build, by contract with the city, starts 60 days prior to the [IndyCar] race weekend,” says Jim Michaelian, CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, which promotes and runs the IndyCar race, and is contracted by Formula E to handle the logistics for the ePrix. “Having the presence of the Formula E race here in Long Beach has not in any way extended that timeframe.”
One of the keys to making the whole thing work is the fact that Formula E’s track layout is largely the same as that used by IndyCar (Formula E skips the complex between Turns 1-5 of the IndyCar course, and takes a shortcut from Shoreline directly onto South Pine). Consequently, virtually all of the work that would normally be required to get the track itself built for an ePrix is being done anyway. It’s motorsport serendipity at its finest. Not even Formula E’s earlier date on the calendar presents a problem.
“We traditionally hold our Grand Prix press day 10 days out from the event, so a lot of what we’re talking about here – having the [IndyCar] course ready to go – had already been on our agenda from years past,” says Michaelian. “We needed to have the course ready to have cars on track on the Tuesday subsequent from the Formula E race.
“So even though Formula E is using a slightly modified course, we were already committed to having the full race course available for our press day activities 10 days out from the IndyCar event.”
With the track itself largely taken care of, the organisers on the Formula E side are free to focus on ensuring that all of the peripheral requirements are up to standard.
“In terms of the track, we mostly go with what the Grand Prix is doing,” says Formula E event organiser Margot McMillen. “And then we add our specifications for garages, our structures, race control … we ensure that all of that is to the same standard as our other races.”
While Formula E leans heavily upon the Long Beach Grand Prix for track operations, the unique demands of all-electric racing still requires some specialist expertise to be brought in. Formula E’s bespoke emission-free charging systems, which run on glycerin, are freighted to each race and overseen by a permanent Formula E team that travels to every event. However this, McMillen says, is likely to change in the future as local crews become more familiar with the equipment.
“We only started with the chargers last year, so right now it is easier to bring people who understand how all of this works,” she explains. “In the future the idea is to rely more on local people – once we have raced in the same place a few times, it’s easier to rely on local staff that has already been trained.”
This approach is already apparent in other areas. With a history dating back to 1975, Long Beach boasts a lot of deeply experienced track and safety workers. But very little of that experience is relevant to the safety protocols unique to the technology in electric vehicles. So while many of the track and safety workers for Long Beach’s IndyCar race pull double-duty and work the ePrix as well, they undergo special training first.
“We rely almost completely on the local crew at Long Beach,” says McMillen. “But we have about 15 people that we bring from the UK to train all of the different groups in the days leading up to the race so that they know how to work with electric vehicles.
“Dealing with the car is a very easy procedure: we have a light on the car, and if there is a problem with the battery and we need to apply a different recovery procedure to what you’d do at a normal motorsport event, the light goes red. That’s never actually happened, but we make sure that everybody is completely trained to know what they need to do if there is a problem with the battery.”
Converting the circuit from Formula E to IndyCar-specification is straightforward. The track itself is in its full IndyCar configuration by the end of the Monday following the Formula E event, and the last remaining bits of Formula E-specific infrastructure have been completely packed up by Wednesday.
Perhaps the biggest potential minefield is the one surrounded by red tape. The elaborate bureaucratic dance required to get a street race up and running is perhaps the most daunting aspect of the entire thing, but at Long Beach, Formula E found an ally in the least likely of places: Long Beach itself. Or rather, the procedures that the city already had in place to cater for proposals like an all-electric motorsport event on public roads.
“Long Beach is a very progressive city in that regard,” says Michaelian. “They host a number of special events here – as well as the Grand Prix and Formula E they have Formula Drift the week between our two events, there’s a marathon here, there are cycling events, and all sorts of movies shoots going on …
“So because this city has a very effective special events department, it is much easier to work here than it is in most locales. You basically have a one-stop experience where you go to the special events people, tell them what you want to do, and as long as it meets the criteria from a safety and insurability and functional standpoint, they then have the ability of bringing in the various service agencies within the city to assist in making that happen. It is probably one of the least stressful and painful processes anywhere in the country.”
It also helps that Long Beach’s long motorsport history gives it a cultural affiliation with racing, which also helped Formula E to gain a foothold in the city.
“I think that can be taken into consideration from both sides,” says Michaelian. “’’Acceptability’ in terms of the resonance with the potential spectators, but also the city and city services side since they are aware of the magnitude of the scale of things that are necessary for the Grand Prix. It wasn’t a huge deal to scale it for what Formula E needs to conduct its event, as opposed to starting from scratch and trying to build something. There’s no doubt about that.”
McMillen agrees: “We have 10 races in city centres and deal with 10 different local authorities that mostly have never seen racing in a city centre before,” she says. “And that makes it much more difficult to explain what we need to do and why we’re closing the city streets. Long Beach is used to racing, so that makes it much easier for us.”
Nobody has ever pretended that organising a street race is easy. But when you’re able to hit that sweet spot of smart organization, good people and the right location, that’s when you can make special things happen. That’s when you can get Formula E and IndyCars sharing a street track around a harbour located halfway between Hollywood and Disneyland.
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