When Will We Find A Finn In Formula E To Bet On?

The slump in Formula One’s entertainment value has given room for Formula E to make it’s mark but can the green machines really pull past the petrol-heads?

It has become almost traditional for me now to wag my finger sternly at those who like to bet on sports in Finland at sites like ComeOn! Sportsbook and similar doing so on the inevitable borefest that is Formula One. Typically this would be done alongside the tales from the saga that is Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari. Is he going? Is he staying? Who will replace him if not? There’s more gossip than you could shake a stick at making the whole thing far more like a Brazilian soap opera than a Norse legend.

F1 Will Have A Rival

• Raikkonen’s woes continue
• Formula E up and coming
• F1 paddock rubbishes it

Of course Vettel wants Raikkonen to stay (so much easier to shine alongside someone with the gloom of career’s twilight about them) but a growing number of voices, now including David Coulthard’s, have been muttering about how Kimi has lost his “edge” and that his days are numbered only by his stubborness in not admitting it. Teams in F1 Sauber and Red Bull, for example, might be threatening to walk away from the sport, but Kimi will have to be prized from his Ferrari with a crowbar.

That’s entirely understandable, but in a season where third is lucky, second a miracle and winning has been almost unthinkable against the might of Mercedes, his ability to strike back at his critics with victories has been limited at best, add to this the pit crew errors and his own moments of madness and you’ve a former world champion looking very much to be on his way out. Something that Formula One as a whole could well be if Richard Branson and co have their way.

Formula E Wraps Up First Year And Will Be back

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from Formula E. I had only vague knowledge of its existence before it hit London’s Battersea Park on the weekend, and rapidly discovered I’d missed the vast majority of the inaugral season of this newly instigated form of motorsport that gives you all the Grand Prix without any of the predictability or, indeed emissions. Formula E isn’t something scrawled down in an illegal MDMA lab, but a motor racing championship for electric cars.

Now I’m gambling news the cars are electric has conjured a rather clunky affair in your mind, an over techno-complicated pretend race season between groups of scientists or students, but nothing could be further from the truth. With big names having signed up both in terms of drivers and teams, Formula E is the cutting edge of electric car technology, and the cars, the cars really are something else. They’ve got the looks but it’s the sound track that blows you away.

As a single seat racer they’ve got the Formula One looks but then sound like the bikes from Tron, and if you were really pushed, you’d have to admit they sound like the future. The roar of an internal combustion engine is lovely, of course, but that whining whir from the electric speedsters really did send shivers down your spine. It was if someone had built a life sized Scalextrics set on the banks of the River Thames. And whilst F1 bosses might be poo-pooing the suggestion it will one day rival their sport, they’re dead wrong.

Electric Racing Cars That Howl

In this first season alone they’ve had seven different winners in 11 races, only highlighting the stagnancy of F1 a little more, and despite a few teething troubles here and there, there’s a format to it that will attract more and more people, sponsors and manufacturers, who will in the end make it as much of a dangerous rival to F1 as F1 currently is to itself. Of course F1 has plenty of time to put its house in order, but it squanders those chances year on year, so who can say.

Ten years down the line, as the technology is improved by the crucible of competition there’s every chance that the Formula E world championship could be every bit as watched at the F1 season, the very fact that the audience can affect the race one of the lovely little innovations that makes it a far more fun sport to watch. Before each race fans can vote for whom amongst the drivers should get a temporary speed boost to use as they see fit in the race, like a Super Mario power-up.

This first season was won by Nelson Piquet Jr. narrowly pipping the two other possible champions on the rather bumpy track, and yes it wasn’t the best of finales, but it was every bit as interesting as an F1 race, and the snobbish people in the F1 paddock know it, however much they try to belittle it. Who knows, another decade of development and perhaps I’ll be advising Finns to take advantage of Finnish gambling laws to bet on one of their countrymen in Formula E not Formula One.