Extreme E Doubleheader In Sardinia | 2022 | Motorsport

Extreme E just finished a whopping doubleheader over in Sardinia and crikey there’s a lot to digest from it.

There was action right from the very start up until the last lap of the last race – and in true Extreme E style, it was all…well extreme.

There were also numerous driver changes which I feel is good to cover now before we dive head on into everything else.

Reigning Champion Molly Taylor left JBXE and Extreme E to go and pursue other avenues of motorsport. This led to Hedda Hosaas to replace her after she had filled in for Klara Andrersson at Xite back in Saudi.

Xite itself needed both drivers replacing, due to Ollie not competing and Hedda’s aforementioned switch. This led to Timo Scheider and Tamara Molinaro (Extreme E’s back-up drivers) to step in for the team instead. Then to come full circle a bit, Klara Andersson became Extreme E’s new back-up driver alongside Extreme E newbie Fraser McConnell. Phew! All clear? Good.

With two rounds now behind us and a massive wait for the next round of the Championship in Chile, let’s take a look at the main talking points from the last week.

1. Sardinia’s Legacy Project

As much as we all love the racing in Extreme E, the purpose of the series is something far greater and so it’s on this that we will focus first.

Extreme E’s Legacy Project this time focused on blue and green carbon restoration in Sardinia. Continuing to work alongside the MEDSEA Foundation (Mediterranean Sea and Coast Foundation), the off-road series supported two significant projects.

The first of these projects explored Green Carbon. Extreme E returned to Sennariolo to visit the communities impacted by the devastating wildfires in 2021. Green carbon ecosystems, such as those in natural forests, play a key role in impacting the levels of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

However, forests are becoming increasingly vulnerable to forest fires, just like in Sardinia and elsewhere in the Mediterranean region last year. In 2021, the fires raged through 20,000 hectares of land, displaced over 1,000 people and killed around 30 million bees. This year, Extreme E continued to help restore the historic olive groves lost to the wildfires in the area of Montiferru and ran a Fire Prevention Campaign within the local communities.

The second project supported the conservation of Posidonia oceanica (seagrass), mitigating the detrimental effects of Blue Carbon in Mediterranean waters. This also saw the drivers getting involved as they went diving off the coast of the island to take a look at the seagrass and planting some of it themselves.

Blue carbon describes the carbon sequestered in the ocean, the definition of which originally focused on mangroves, salt-marshes and seagrasses, but now also includes seaweed, sediments more broadly, and even carbon sequestered by whales.

“Our goal is to be able to plant one million new plants of Posidonia oceanica by 2030,” – Alessio Satta, President of the MEDSEA Foundation.

The ocean holds sixteen times more carbon than the terrestrial biosphere, has absorbed almost a third of the CO2 humans have released into the atmosphere and has trapped approximately 93% of the excess heat in the biosphere resulting from the massive release of greenhouse gasses.

2. Redemption for Chip Ganassi

Following what can only be described as some of the worst luck in motorsport last year, it looked like Chip Ganassi were finally turning a page in 2022. Back at the first round in Saudi, the American outfit made it into the final race of the weekend for the very first time. I know I wasn’t alone in punching the air in triumph when this happened. But nobody dared get ahead of themselves and say that Chip Ganassi were on the up, for fear of cursing them.

But during the first part of the Sardinia double header, Sara Price and Kyle Leduc did everything they needed to to succeed. By winning the crazy race, they not only perfectly justified that races’ existence, but also slingshotted themselves into the final at the last moment.

Again though, nobody wanted to risk getting their hopes up. So when they crossed the line in a spectacular second place come the end of the final race, everyone in the Extreme E world was absolutely ecstatic!

For them to then be promoted the race win after a time penalty was handed out to Rosberg X Racing (more on that below) was the cherry on top of one of the best cakes you’ll ever see.

When you think that last year, Chip Ganassi had a forty second lead before their car broke on them to snatch the win away from them in Sardinia, for the team to now follow through and win here was a brilliant underdog story and shows why Extreme E is just so darn good.

3. Controversy & Rivalry between Rosberg X Racing and Acciona Sainz

However, there was also massive drama in that final race as Johan Kristoffersson and Carlos Sainz Sr. came together in a massive shunt that saw the latter completely wiped out of the race.

El Matador himself described it as one of the worst crashes of his life and one that could have been avoided. Rosberg X Racing would go on to win the race but were handed a thirty second penalty for the collision that then demoted them to P3.

Acciona Sainz didn’t believe this was a fair punishment for such a dangerous crash with both teams and drivers being very vocal on social media about it. Acciona Sainz then went one further and appealed to the stewards to inflict a harsher penalty on the team. At the time of writing, there hasn’t been an update as to what the result of this appeal will be.

The crash itself proved once again how dangerous motorsport can be and that nobody is impervious to this danger, no matter how much experience you might have.

Extreme E has seen some big crashes in its short history so far but this one might just spark a whole conversation about what is fair racing and how the punishments for such crashes are determined.

4. Fight for Best of the Rest

Following a disqualification from the final race of the second round because of a loose safety belt, ABT Cupra came crashing back down to Earth after what had been a tremendous weekend of racing for the team.

This sees them down at the bottom of the Championship table with just six points. But the team should still be happy with their overall progress over these two rounds and are definitely ones to watch moving forwards.

Veloce is just one place ahead of them with seven points. But given Christine GZ’s massive crash and injury in Saudi Arabia, these two rounds were all about building her confidence back up and getting Lance more seat time in the car as he’s still relatively new to Extreme E. Hopefully they’ll be back in the mix for Chile.

Next up the road are JBXE where a P4 in the first final gave them some much needed points and gave Kevin Hansen a lot to be happy about, the Swede getting very emotional post race as he reflected on har far he’d come since recovering from an injury he sustained at the first round. Hedda did an excellent job too and I for one am hoping we get to see her stay with the team for the rest of the season. It’s very exciting driver pairing.

McLaren are one point ahead of them with nineteen points in what was a tough weekend overall but gave them a lot of experience and plenty to build on moving forwards.

Andretti United and Xite Racing are tied on 27 points each now with both teams getting on the podium over the course of the two rounds. Timo and Tamara did a fantastic job stepping in for Xite and seeing them on the podium was just what the doctor ordered and again showed that anything is possible in Extreme E.

After a tough start to the year, the same can be said for Andretti and again, you can see how much it means to the team to get back on the podium. We even got to see a short battle between the Hansen brothers (as predicted by me earlier this year on this very website) which was simply lovely.

All of these teams will be hoping they can at least get on the podium next time out to salvage their Championship fights and at the very least, beat those around them.

5. Can anyone stop Rosberg X Racing’s Domination?

The battle for second in the Championship is very close with Acciona Sainz, X44 and Chip Ganassi all separated by just three points, with the latter edging ahead of the rest with 43 points.

But once again, it’s Rosberg X Racing that sits on top of the table with a whopping 80 points to their name. So the question becomes – can anyone stop the defending world champions or will it be a runaway victory for the outfit?

Last year, Andretti United and X44 were the only teams besides Rosberg to win an X-Prix and we’ve already seen it’s possible to beat them this year with Chip Ganassi. Heck, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate safety belt incident that ABT Cupra had had, they would have been able to take the win and prevent Rosberg X Racing from taking a massive lead in the standings.

Funnily enough though, that’s a perfect point that reinforces the fact that it’s not all done and dusted for Rosberg. Anything can happen in Extreme E – as we’ve already seen – and all it takes is one bad weekend for any of the other teams to sizeably close up the gap to those out in front and then it becomes something that is still all to play for.

This Championship isn’t over until the fat lady sings.

Extreme E returns this September as they go racing in Chile.

Author: Thiemo Albers-Daly