Can the E1 powerboat series succeed where others sank?

Basso knew that Agag was an investor in Sophi Horne’s SeaBird hydrofoil boat, which was being developed to sell to consumers. The Italian believed that her customer vessel could be marketed through a racing championship with a green mission.

“We have a chance to build new revenues, new entertainment and innovate,” he says.
Basso soon secured an exclusive 25-year licence for an electric powerboat racing championship from the governing body UIM, as well as funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

“We went pitching to investors,” Basso recalls. “When the PIF heard about this, they said ‘Okay, stop the conversation with everybody else, we want to invest.’”

The former F1 engineer also headed up an in-house technical team – and a selection of outside partners including battery supplier Kreisel and McLaren Applied – which came up with the resulting 150kW (200bhp) electric RaceBird, which can hit a top speed of 50 knots (93km/h / 58mph).

“Sophi’s plan to use the foil the came from the romantic idea of seeing a bird gliding on the water in this nature-driven design approach,” Basso explains.

“There was a massive engineering value behind this. It allowed us to be much more efficient than standard hulls [with less drag and water-resistance on the boat]. The battery weighs less than 20% of the total boat [246kg out of 1100kg].”

The carbon fibre hull was created with the help of Comptech Engineering Ltd, whose senior engineer Phil Cooper worked with Arrows, Jaguar, Renault, Williams and Red Bull in F1.

There are others from the world of grand prix racing too. Joe Sturdy, now co-team principal at Team Brady, was previously Max Verstappen’s trackside power unit engineer at Red Bull. McLaren Applied’s electronic tech was used in putting the RaceBird together.

The interior and steering wheel of the RaceBird looks much like a single-seater – but it hardly drives like one.

The boat only hits peak performance when running up on its foils (rather than its hull sitting flat on the water) but it operates on a knife-edge – keeping the vessel skimming the water up high is tough, as current E1 champion and Team Brady driver Emma Kimilainen explains.

“The trickiest thing is probably maximising the performance at every possible corner,” she says.

“The higher you drive the boat, the faster it goes, because you have less drag, but then you have a big risk for cavitation (when the foiling phenomenon fails and the boat hits the water.)

“You’re trying really hard to find the absolute limit, you need to constantly change the settings of the boat and anticipate everything that’s coming.”

Competitors can alter the foil’s angle of attack (known as trim) as well as the ‘outboard’ i.e. how close the hull is to the water. This is particularly pertinent when running in another boat’s wake, with the potential to gain or lose time in these moments being significant.

“It’s been very difficult adjusting,” says Catie Munnings, who’s a rally driver and TV presenter in her day job. “It’s natural to try to be as aggressive as you can, and that doesn’t really work on the boat. It’s about the fine tuning of how to be smooth in the water.”

The sporting format follows one similar to rallycross events, with knockout races and joker laps.

The problem of drivers racing on a surface which is always changing also highlights that it’s sometimes difficult for the boats to race once one is out front, due to challenge of running in another’s choppy wake.

It’s often a race to the first corner then, but then again land-lubbing rallycross can have the same problem, just manifested differently…

Reigning champs Kimilainen and her Team Brady colleague Sam Coleman (a powerboat champion himself) win the Maggiore event, with the former having adapted particularly well to the new series. She suggests it might be because she was always quick in the wet in single-seaters.

E1 claims that its current data in fact shows overall female racers have been faster than the male competitors, but it’s difficult to discern a reason for this Maggiore event

In its planning stages the championship wanted to field a diverse group of drivers, and formed an E1 Pilot Academy to get the prospective entrants all more au fait with the water.

The training was intense, particularly the safety aspect.

“We did the dunk test, where they flip us, give us oxygen and tell you to sit there and wait for the cockpit to fill up with water!” adds Munnings. “It’s in those moments where you wonder if it’s for you! There’s definitely a different margin you take on water to land.”

One male and female racer each are assigned to a celebrity’s team, of which there are nine. The two pilots share a boat and alternate between races.

“The first question, especially when we talk to broadcasters is: ‘What’s your reach?’ Bloody hell, I’m here because I need reach!” says Basso.

“Having these celebrities on board, we can claim ‘reach’ in a very deterministic way, because everybody can go on Instagram and check their followers. If you add them all up, we get 1.1 billion followers.

“This is why, with media, we get a lot of interest as well. And this is why we have a very nice coverage worldwide.”

Nadal, Smith, Brady as well as others like footballer Didier Drogba, DJ Steve Aoiki and basketball superstar LeBron James (who appears to have split his entry with the Saudi city of AlUla), have paid $2m each for a licence with a $1m yearly operating fee. The series takes care of the freight (strictly done by ship or road rather than plane, for environmental reasons), so it’s a turn-up-and-race format.

Some celeb owners appear more involved than others. Rafael Nadal has clearly splashed out on his team’s paddock facilities compared to others, while Kimilainen says that Brady contacts his drivers regularly about the racing.

“He’s very much involved.” she says. “If he’s not on site, he’s watching at home. He’s always sending us messages, rooting for us, asking ‘Why did this happen? Why did that happen?’ He’s creates a fiercely competitive, yet fun, atmosphere.”

Other recent fledgling championships with some similarities have faltered. The electric ESkootr Championship failed after one season, and Extreme E for the moment appears to have gone quiet with no calendar announced following its hydrogen-powered Extreme H transformation.

Basso puts forward his argument as to why E1 will be different.

“The key challenge for me is to have multi-year agreements,” he says.

“It’s great news that Jeddah has a five-year agreement. It is even greater that Doha and Dubrovnik, where this year we had a one-year agreement, they both want to renew for multiple years.

“This will allow us to be more stable, to have easier conversations with sponsors.

“The most [important thing for us] than anything else for us is the hosting fees. This is the most important revenue. We are in the event industry, and we want to make sure that we provide quality events – for the hospitality, for the fans.

“We want to have a 15-event calendar in three years. We got 30,000 people in two days in Doha [in 2025], which is an incredible result. 15,000 in Jeddah [also in 2025].

“Maybe they’re not impressive number for some sports but, for us, the trend is quite exciting.”