Extreme E LIVE: Results and reaction from Desert X Prix final
Follow all the reaction from the Desert X Prix final after Rosberg XR beat Hamilton’s X44 and Andretti United
Rosberg Extreme are the very first Desert X-Prix winners! Extreme E’s first finals day promised plenty after two enthralling qualifying sessions yesterday suggested there will be entertainment when the cars finally go wheel-to-wheel, and the final day was absorbing.
The brand new motorsport series is making its debut in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, one of five extreme environments over the year chosen not only for the remarkable landscape – think the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic ice – but also for their susceptibility to the climate crisis as the series aims to raise awareness as it goes. The fully electric SUVs went head to head here in a semi-final between the top three from qualifying (two final spots up for grabs), a second semi-final called the ‘crazy race’ between the next three from qualifying (one final spot), before a shoot out between the bottom three simply to decide their points ranking.
And it was Nico Rosberg’s XR team who won the inaugural Extreme E race in the Saudi Arabia desert, beating Lewis Hamilton’s X44 and Andretti United. Follow all the reaction below.
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Championship standings after Desert X Prix
- Taylor/Kristoffersson (Rosberg XR) 35 points
- Loeb/Gutierrez (X44) 30
- Munnings/Hansen (Andretti) 28
- Sainz/Sanz (Sainz) 26
- Giampaoli Zonca/Bennett ( Hispano Suiza) 20
- Ahlin-Kottulinsky/Button (JBXE) 17
- Hurtgen/Ekstrom (ABT Cupra) 13
- Leduc/Price (Ganassi) 12
- Chadwick/Sarrazin (Veloce) 8
Who are your finalists? Rosberg Extreme Racing
Nico Rosberg caused a sensation in 2016 when he became the first - and so far, only - driver of the hybrid era to beat Lewis Hamilton to an F1 world championship. Then retired, leaving the sport to focus on other things. The shock of his departure, having done what he wanted to do, still seems fairly fresh in F1 but Nico himself has long moved on. Entering Extreme E, the rivalry he had with Hamilton is reignited - but as team owners this time. Rosberg Extreme and X44 were the two teams battling for contention in qualiying and Rosberg’s squad came out on top both times, in pure pace terms, thanks to some incredible driving from Johan Krisoffersson and Molly Taylor. Kristoffersson is a multiple-time world champion in rallycross, Taylor is an Australian rally champion who showed she was the team’s speed powerhouse, making the difference on both qualifying runs. They won out again in the semi-final race, so go into the final as the leaders and, you have to say, the favourites unless X44 or Andretti United can pip them to that all-important first chicane and grab a lead.
Who are your finalists? X44
The name Sir Lewis Hamilton probably shouldn’t need any introduction but just in case you’ve stumbled across this liveblog as your first foray into motorsport: Britain’s most successful Formula One driver, a seven-time world champion and holder of virtually every record the sport possesses, Hamilton has in the past 18 months started branching out his work beyond his own driving. Reflecting his own environmental views (Hamilton is a vegan and after years of living the luxury lifestyle associated with F1, sold his private jet and now seeks to lower his own carbon footprint) he and longstanding friend and manager Marc Hynes founded X44 to do something new, beyond the world of F1. The team’s small and relatively newly formed but has experienced rally tooling outfit Prodrive along to help them and an absolutely talent-loaded lineup, with the most successful driver in the history of the World Rally Championship, in Sebastien Loeb and an ultra-experienced, super-adaptive Dakar racer in Christina Gutierrez.
Who are your finalists? Andretti United XE
We’ve got a couple of hours before the final so here’s a quick look into the teams that have made it. First up, the qualifiers from the Crazy Race, Andretti United. They’re a powerhouse team, bringing together both the iconic Andretti name - and decades of motorsport experience - and United Autosport, owned by none other than McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown, himself a former racer. Putting the two American racing teams together, they’ve teamed up and picked an all-European line up for Extreme E. Swedish Timmy Hansen and British Catie Munnings make up their driver pairing; if you have kids (or are a kid!) you might know Catie from a CBBC series called Catie’s Amazing Machines a few years ago. But she and Timmy are accomplished motorsport drivers in their own right; Catie’s a rallying specialist and Timmy drives in World Rallycross - a sort of dirt track circuit racing that combines rallying and wheel-to-wheel action. So they’re perfectly placed for Extreme E and showed it in the Crazy Race, easily leading their way to the final.
It’s just a couple of hours now until we get to watch the Extreme E final race. Here’s some of the best pictures of racing in the spectacular desert landscape of AlUla:
Extreme E in pictures: The best images from the Desert X Prix
The new motorsport series starring electric SUVs cutting through the remote desert of Saudi Arabia has made for a picturesque event
The good news is, when Extreme E bodywork gets broken it’s not spraying carbon fibre
Extreme E cars are specialist-built, down to what’s used to actually fashion the bodywork of the cars. It’s not carbon fibre, like on a regular race car but a compound made of woven flax fibres by a Swiss company called Bcomp. Although it’s just as tough as carbon fibre, it doesn’t shatter and being made of plants, it has a carbon neutral - or even negative - cycle. It was originally developed as an alternative for making skis but the company quickly realised there was an application for the automotive world and have worked to bring it to racing; it’s also used to make McLaren’s F1 drivers’ seats. You can see it on the naked bodywork Veloce tweeted when they were first working on their Odyssey-21:
It’s not just ABT Cupra who’ve had a gruelling repair job in a tiny tent this weekend
There were two big crashes yesterday: one team’s in, one’s out & here’s why
ABT Cupra have done an absolutely incredible job to repair their Odyssey-21 overnight, including a fully battery change, after Christina Huertgen’s multiple-roll, end-over-end crash yesterday. The other team to suffer problems in Qualifying One was Veloce, who had to announce their withdrawal shortly after the session and will be back to compete at Lac Rose, Senegal, for the Ocean X-Prix. The difference is that although there was massive damage to the ABT Cupra car, the roll cage remained intact - because it was an airborne one, with the car effectively only hitting itself and sand, it was able to avoid taking an impact that would harm the structure of the Odyssey-21. Veloce, although they wanted to repair and continue, were told by Extreme E that there was no way to replace the roll structure in the remote location (it means stripping the whole car and rebuilding) or to repair a kink in it that had developed when Stephane Sarrazin hit one of AlUla’s rocky outcrops, hard. Although it’s a small dent, it could risk that the structure isn’t strong enough to not crumple, crushing a driver, in another crash so it’s a heartbreaking, hard weekend for the squad moving from racing computer games to the real world with the toughest possible start.
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