Alejandro Agag: Formula E founder to ‘disrupt’ with more green racing

Extreme E

Then it was Formula E, now it's Extreme E – but next year and beyond, Alejandro Agag has even more plans for green racing championships that will raise environmental awareness

4 Extreme E CEO Alejandro Agag

Extreme E boss Alejandro Agag is pushing ahead with more ambitious electric racing plans

Extreme E

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It’s the carefree side of the world’s worthiest racing championship. After a day of zero-emissions racing and environmental activism in Uruguay, officials and assorted media from the Extreme E electric series are wined and dined onboard the ship that acts as its floating home away from home.

The choppy water off the slightly weathered seaside resort of Punta del Este rocks the St Helena throughout the night, some letting their hair down before another shift saving the planet, whilst others sit looking mildly dazed at the end of the second season of this rallycross championship for electric SUVs.

At the heart of it all is Alejandro Agag: the founder of Extreme E — and Formula E before that. A charismatic dynamo who’s leading the party while appearing to be single-handedly hauling motor sport towards a green future.

For most of the year, the ex-Royal Mail ship St Helena chugs around the Atlantic Ocean on low-sulphur diesel, carrying the cars and equipment needed for the championship before anchoring, disgorging its cargo and becoming the headquarters for that weekend’s round.

RXR 7 at Extreme E Uruguary Energy X Prix

Extreme E has managed to overcome initial early teething issues to now provide great racing

Extreme E

This year it has visited Saudi Arabia, Sardinia, Italy and Chile before November’s dramatic Uruguay round but, ahead of the finale, there’s still plenty to do for Agag, who shows no signs of flagging as journalists disembark late in the evening. It’s just as well: he has a championship to run, a marine conservation project to launch and — most pressingly — investors to entertain.

Few do it better than Agag whose compelling manner and convincing pitches have brought money pouring in to electric racing over the past decade. He persuaded investors to back the fledgling Formula E series before switching his focus to Extreme E, which has attracted teams run by Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, as well as Andretti Racing and McLaren over the course of two challenging seasons.

There are plans to expand the championship, but that’s not all Agag has on his plate: he’s developing a hydrogen racing series and electric powerboat championship at a frantic pace, with the aim of getting both racing in the next 18 months. It can only be a passion project and for the former Spanish MEP, it’s fuelled by the earnest belief in the the power of motor sport to develop the technologies that can avert climate disaster.

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“I’m not gonna say something dramatic – ‘the whole humankind is gonna disappear’,” says Agag. “But there are gonna be areas of the world that are going to really, really struggle with climate change.

“We’re still on the path to an increase of three degrees celsius in global temperatures. There’s many things we need to do with renewable energy, carbon capture, nuclear fusion and agriculture.

“You need a disruption to change things.”

Agag, 52, quit the European Parliament to set up an investment company. His sights turned to motor racing when he bought the Spanish TV rights to F1, along with Flavio Briatore. GP2 team ownership then followed, which brought him to an informal meal with Jean Todt — soon to become president of racing’s governing body, the FIA — where the first plans for Formula E were discussed.

At that 2011 meeting, the outline of the championship was sketched on a napkin. Three years later, Agag had secured the investment, top-level manufacturers and drivers to form the very first electric single-seater racing series. Although the speed of the cars, the twisty circuits and the quality of racing divided opinion, it is still thriving as a fully-accredited world championship about to enter its ninth season with a third-generation car that is vastly more advanced than the first.

St Helena Extreme E ship

St Helena transports the cars and provides base for Agag to preach the good word

Extreme E

Stepping down as Formula E CEO to become chairman in 2018 made time to develop his next environmentally-conscious project: Extreme E, a rallycross championship featuring electric SUVs, combined with a a campaign to raise awareness of the Earth’s plight. It hasn’t been without its snags.

Early races were characterised by cars breaking down if they so much as looked at a pothole, dust clouds engulfing entire courses and all the natural challenges a global pandemic brought, threatened to derail the burgeoning series, but, speaking at the Uruguay round, Agag said the fact that a quirky project that has had so many critics is still running can be taken as an indication of its reasonable health. The subsequent thrilling title scrap between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg’s eponymous teams, with the former winning, showed that the racing itself is on the right path.

The championship has come a long way from its difficult birth, particularly the first race in Saudi Arabia which saw so much dust kicked up by the cars the format had to be changed into a rally-style qualifying time trial before the fields were reduced for the races on the final day.

RXR 8 at Extreme E Uruguary Energy X Prix

Lewis Hamilton’s team of Sébastien Loeb and Cristian Gutiérrez won out in second season finale

Extreme E

“With Covid, we started the competition in the worst possible moment, and we couldn’t do any testing,” Agag admits. “The first races were the tests! In Saudi Arabia, it was really dusty and risky – it was tough. This is what’s interesting about doing a new championship – it’s trial and error.”

Originally conceived with director friend Fisher Stevens, Agag’s vision for the championship was to be a cinematic telling of the Earth’s impending climate crisis, beamed from extremely remote locations which have already suffered damage to its environment. As Agag soon found out though, what sounds good in theory often turns out to be more tricky in reality.

“Some governments don’t want to say their country is damaged,” he says. “But some of them are really enthusiastic – Greenland, for example, they really want us to go back. But that race was so expensive, because we realised there’s absolutely nothing there!

“You have to fly everything in from Denmark. Even the marshals – you need like 60-70 guys around the track making sure that everything works, you have to fly them in from another country. The thing about remote locations is they’re remote! That’s what makes them very difficult.”

Uruguay – a country which runs off 98% renewable energy, hence its place on the calendar – could represent a new model for Extreme E, whereby fans can get up close to the action. But travelling spectators create more CO2, with Agag admitting he has no solution to this “compromise”.

Another serious issue for Extreme E was how easily its Spark Odyssey 21 cars were breaking. Races often ended with courses showered with bodywork and cars stranded with broken suspension and steering.

The Fox suspension firm was brought in to help remedy the issue for this season, and the strengthened machines – driven by some world-class drivers – are now providing great entertainment.

The main metric of the championship’s success will be for fans to become increasingly interested in the series and its environmental message. Agag thinks the series is on the right path but can see an obvious roadblock too.

“The TV interest is good, and is growing,” he says. “But it’s not growing more because we don’t have so much frequency, so people kind of forget about it. Five events a year is not enough for me. I would like to have 10.”

Fans at Extreme E Uruguay Energy X Prix

Fans got first proper chance to sample the action in Punta del Este

Extreme E

A core part of Extreme E’s format is the legacy projects it holds at each race meeting, from planting a million mangrove trees in Senegal to partnering with The Nature Conservancy, which works to provide “forest security, maintenance and the restoration of damaged areas” for the Amazon.

The projects are a tangible legacy for the series, an incentive for hosts, and a useful publicity opportunity for the series. Just as importantly for Agag, it is popular with the teams.

“What do I want to see?” asks team-owner Rosberg who is a vocal supporter of the series. “That we all manage to do more measurable impact. As the racing gets better and better, this needs to happen in parallel.

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“That’s why we’re all involved. We’re not just here for the racing, we need to get this measurable impact to grow. And it’s very difficult to do. For example, we’re going to Sardinia next week to plant 3,000 trees near where the Extreme E circuit is, to help with regeneration after the forest fires.”

Agag is of course an adept salesman for the series over which he presides, talking about it in a self-deprecating manner which draws in those he sells it to. He’s maintains the approach when talking about the new boat racing E1 series and Extreme H, the hydrogen sibling to his current electric championship.

“The boats are coming together very well,” he says, before slightly contradicting himself. “We keep breaking the foils, and they go to the bottom of the river, but we’re fixing that…

“Boats even more so [than Formula E and Extreme E], no one has done it. So it’s a lot of new research. I think marine mobility is going to go electric, especially [on] lakes and rivers.”

The first race meeting of the waterborne championship, in which Red Bull F1 driver Sergio Perez has a team, will be at the end of 2023 – with Extreme H following the year after.

5 Extreme E CEO Alejandro Agag

Team owner and 2016 F1 champion Nico Rosberg is a vocal supporter of the series

Extreme E

“Extreme H is progressing well too,” Agag adds. “It’s going to be the first and only championship in the world of hydrogen cars in it. But once you get to do it, you realise how difficult it is.

“The hydrogen cars don’t have the same range as the electric cars, but that’s why we make a championship. To help develop technology, improve technology, and maybe you can then improve the performance of hydrogen.

“We have the prototype car. We are really in the edge of technology and exploring what can be done.”

As the St Helena heads back across the Atlantic, the music turned off until next March’s season three opener in Saudi Arabia, there’s unlikely to be any let up in pace for Agag.