Tuesday, December 16, 2014

F1 PILOTS DOMINATE IN PUNTA DEL ESTE

The Uruguyan round of the Formula e World Championship has been run and won in the beachside city of Punta Del Este.


Punta Del Este, known as the 'Monaco of South America'
A couple of hours north of Montevideo, Punta Del Este is a wealthy enclave of rich Uruguyans, and it's easy to see why this round of the Formula e championship attracted a full field. Nice place to spend a weekend.

A quick look at the results board shows that a number of F1 pilots who can't get a ride in Formula One, are getting their rocks off in the all-electric formula.



What's more impressive are the people associating themsleves with this new-age racing category. Renault, Andretti, Prost, Piquet, Trulli, Senna, Alguersuari, Brabham and Heidfeld.



The Uruguyan winner, Sebastian Buemi (above) played second fiddle to Jean-Eric Vergne for most of the race, but Vergne bounced off a wall, and the battle went to Buemi.

You can check out the racing on YouTube, but it seems it's almost as exciting a contest as a Formula 1 race, just a lot quieter.



Young Matthew Brabham had a weekend he'd rather forget, with a lot of car problems, and incidents during the race, resulting in a DNF. However, Team Andretti says they love the guy and he's welcome back any time.

An interesting sidebar - it seems the race cars don't hold enough charge to complete the race, so instead of normal pitstops the drivers head for the garage - and change cars!

Not sure if this is going to really take over from Formula One, just yet.

Especially with oil at $56 a barrel - it seems we've got a bit more on hand to burn up through the exhaust pipes.

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