Formula 1 vs Formula E Pit Stops Explained ️

[00:00:00]One of the big differences between Formula 1 and Formula E is how pit stops are handled. So, in Formula 1, you obviously have traditional pit stops.

[00:00:05]You go into the pits, you go and change tires, your fresher tires means you now go faster, get the undercut, get track position. Formula E has a couple of different options, right? There's attack mode and there's pit boost. Pit boost works a lot more like a traditional pit stop. You go into the pit lane, they literally plug you in, and they plug you in and they charge up your battery, and you get like an extra 10% of battery charge with that. So, pit boost, I think, is the slightly less interesting version of it. Now, attack mode, I think, is amazing. It's like it's literally like Mario Kart vibes. There's some chevrons on the ground, which are on like the outside of one of the large corners, okay? So, you drive offline to go and pick up attack mode. And what attack mode gives you is it gives you like between two to six minutes of extra energy. So, it gives you extra energy, it gives you like 50 extra energy units, I guess, like megawatts or something.

[00:00:57]But, also, more interestingly, when you're in attack mode, you have four-wheel drive rather than two, which makes a big difference when it's raining, as well. So, that [laughter] that's amazing. That's amazing, watching Formula E on a slightly damp track, cuz attack mode is just wildly OP. But, yeah, you unlock four-wheel drive, which means you come out of corners with so much more grip than everyone else. But, it lasts a couple of minutes, so it gets you some track position, gets you caught up to people, but then, obviously, they have attack mode later. So, at the start of Formula E races, the cars are all very bunched up and close together, because Formula E is a battery-limited race, not a tire-limited race. So, actually, track position is less important than saving your battery in the early phase. So, in the early phases of the races, the cars are all bunched up together, cuz they want to like jostle for position, but they don't really want to be in front cutting that hole in the air. Later in the race, the cars spread out a little more. So, you got to be very wily about when you take your attack mode. So, if you take your attack mode too early, that's used up your battery a little bit too early in the race, and you can't actually push the rest of the race still yet. But, if you use your attack mode too late, the cars have spread out.

[00:02:08]There's now a couple of seconds gap between each cars, and your attack mode is not going to be good enough to get you uh very far. In the early phases of the race, if you're at the back of the grid and take attack mode, you can get to the front like really quite swiftly, because there might only be like 6 or 7 seconds separating the whole grid. In the later phase of the race, when there's like 1 or 2 seconds between every competitor, your attack mode might only get you three or four places. So, you got to be really canny about when you take your attack mode and when everyone else has taken their attack mode. And so, that that that adds that level of strategy to the racing, which I really enjoy.