The EV Cup
Tomorrow is the first round of the EV Cup! Are you excited? I am. The first round of the worlds first electric racing car series at our very own Silverstone, amazing new high-tech opportunities start then and it’s very exciting. The 4 race UK calendar is visiting Silverstone tomorrow, Snetterton on the 20th, Rockingham on the 10th of September and then finally Brands in late October. Not only that there’s going to be 2 European races and 2 races in America. I’ll be at all of British rounds and from what I’ve read about it, it’s going to be incredible.
Except it’s not.
And I’m not.
And I’m really quite disappointed.
Everything was so well planned, at Autosport last year I spoke to the MD of the EV Cup Sylvain Filippi about it (an interview which ironically, seems to have disappeared from my website) and it sounded great but I didn’t think any more about it until January of this year where again we discussed the plans for the series. There was a calendar and cars, they’d had support from the old Stig, Damon Hill and I spent a lot of time investigating the prices and it was so affordable which made me even more excited.
Then in February something quite extraordinary happened. Lord Paul Drayson of Le Mans fame decided that his team was leaving sports car racing of the endurance kind, and would instead turn their attention to the EV Cup. This was a huge move, and I was so impressed at the commitment that it showed from Lord Drayson and his team, but then there was silence.
Until May. When everything was cancelled.
I still can’t quite believe it. Everything seemed so great, it was so on track, but then they called time on Europe, because things weren’t ready. I don’t really understand what went wrong, from the emails I’d had with them it seemed all ready, because in terms of the cars there wasn’t going to be loads of them and so there would be no issues. But the US is the place for them apparently.
What I still can’t get my head around, is Lord Drayson. I am still very impressed at his commitment, but he’s left the worlds biggest endurance series to have it thrown back in his face and clearly he didn’t want it to happen this way but it must be heart breaking. He took criticism from some of those in his own part of the industry but no he believes in this and so this is what he’s doing.
The EV Cup is really exciting, but through a lack of communication, causing a lack of interest, I can’t see this year being a big hit for those involved. Recently they replaced their old website, which was great because they out grew it very quickly, but there was no grand launch or ‘look we have a new website’ until the day after.
Their Twitter stream went like this;
26th July; GUESS WHAT?????? …….. EVCUP’s new website is being launched tomorrow!!! 
27th July; Tick tock tick tock 
- At this point I checked their website and it hadn’t changed and I continued to check it all day. Their website then launched (and there were 11 other tweets that day, and then…) -
28th July; Has everyone checked out our new website!??!?
It’s so disappointing to see such an exciting prospect being let down in the way that it has, the EV market and interest is bigger than ever and now we have to wait until next year to see what electric racing is all about. There are so many opportunities for their website to keep the interest; interviews, video tours of their factory, they’ve already tested the car at Silverstone so a video of that would have been great. For whatever reason, the EV Cup has had a year to forget, which is fine…
But I just wish they’d keep us a bit more informed.
