2022 Desert X Prix: A matter of time before someone gets seriously injured

Greetings, friends of motor racing,

in Saudi Arabia, more precisely near the planned city of Neom, the second season of Extreme E, the electric off-road racing series, began at the weekend. As usual, Sir Lewis Hamilton's Team X44 won the qualifying - in the race, the team of his ex-teammate Nico Rosberg came out on top (as almost always, too).

Apart from all the criticism of the professionalism in the racing series - various misspelled names on the list of participants, calculation errors in determining time penalties etc. notwithstanding - I now have another big problem with Extreme E: the issue of safety.

Yes, Motorsport is dangerous - that was already the case more than 100 years ago and will probably never change completely. It is the responsibility of organisers and regulators to minimise the risk for everyone involved - drivers, officials and spectators - which has been working quite well in international motorsport for many years, thanks to the efforts of the FIA. However, a certain risk always remains.

The desert sand in Saudi Arabia has its problems. Again and again this weekend it became apparent that it is not a suitable surface for curves, especially in the fast sections of the track. Not only did Christine Giampaoli Zonca roll over in qualifying and break her foot in the accident, but drivers like Sebastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah were also only able to narrowly avoid rolling over and drove on two wheels at high speeds.

This looks spectacular and also gets a lot of clicks on social media and YouTube, but in my eyes the health and maybe even the lives of the drivers are put at risk here.

Another point is the difference in speed within the field: I don't want to blame this on gender, but the fact is that in Extreme E off-road full professionals like Loeb, Al-Attiyah, Johan Kristoffersson or Kyle LeDuc compete against male and female drivers who in fact only have amateur status. If they have any significant off-road experience at all, like Jamie Chadwick last year.

Shortly before the serious accident in the final

"Multi-class racing" on the same track can work in general, as can be seen in the WEC, for example, where hypercars are on the track alongside LMP2 cars and GT cars. However, you can't compare that at all in an off-road race with a lot of dust. Here, the drivers are often flying blind in the races against each other.

The fact that Tanner Foust in the McLaren XE car remained unhurt when he hit Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky in the Rosberg X Racing car at high speed in the final was in my eyes pure luck. Just like last year at the Desert X Prix when Kyle LeDuc hit Claudia Hürtgen.

In my opinion, the people in charge of the racing series have to intervene urgently. Otherwise it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured.

Photo: Charly Lopez / Extreme E

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