Getting Down And Dirty With Extreme E In Sardinia

For three seasons, all-electric racing series Extreme E has been touring the world hosting closely-fought off-road races. At each event, teams made up of a male and female driver face off in a whirlwind of dirt, dust and carnage. After that, the whole show is packed up and shipped off to a new far-flung location. It's an exciting series, but sadly rarely lets fans on site to see the action for themselves.

However, for its last X Prix, Jalopnik was invited out to Sardinia to see the racing action firsthand and find out more about what it takes to host electric rally racing in some of the world's most remote locations.

Full disclosure: Extreme E flew me from New York to Sardinia where it put me up in a hotel, fed me and transported me to its makeshift track every day.

For the seventh and eighth rounds in its 2023 season, Extreme E set up in Sardinia, Italy, where it took over a NATO base on the southwest of the Mediterranean island. At the site, Extreme E sets up everything from scratch, including a pit lane, race control, media center and even a catering outfit for everyone on site to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It might not look like much, but this is the Extreme E pit lane, where all 10 teams assemble and maintain their cars over a race weekend. Up and down the grid, you'll find squads fielded by big names like Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Andretti.

Each of the ten teams facing in Extreme E has its own garage on the pit lane. From there, they can get their Odyssey 21 electric racers set up for a weekend of racing. It's also here that they'll make repairs after any collisions that happen over the course of the race weekend.

As well as being electric, one of the big differentiators in Extreme E is that every team must field a male and female driver over the course of each race. Here, Rosberg X Racing driver Mikaela Åhlin-Kottulinsky waits at the Switch Zone to take over from her teammate, Johan Kristoffersson.

After two laps, each car heads into the Switch Zone where the first driver hops out the car and a mechanic jumps in to help adjust the seat. Then, driver number two jumps in, is strapped into place and races out and back onto the course. In this area of the track, each car's speed is limited to just 30km/h.

In Extreme E, the racing is fierce and the crashes can be catastrophic. McLaren found this out the hard way in Sardinia when racer Emma Gilmour had a big crash in practice on Friday and totaled the team's car. As a backup, Extreme E goes everywhere with a Championship Car that acts as a spare vehicle for every team on the grid. After Gilmour's crash, McLaren switched to the Championship Car and did its best to cover the Odyssey 21 with its papaya look.

Extreme E is about more than just close racing, though, and puts a huge focus on sustainability at each event. The biggest step it's taken to clean up racing is to cut out air freight, instead opting to ship everything it needs on a race weekend onboard the St Helena. Launched in the 1990s, this ex-mailing ship was converted by Extreme E and has storage space for all 11 cars, as well as rooms for guests to stay, restaurants and bars onboard.

Another step Extreme E has taken to reduce its impact is its reliance on cleaner forms of generating the electricity needed to run its operation. As such, there was a large solar array on site in Sardinia, as well as a hydrogen fuel cell that generates electricity for use on site.

Finally, Extreme E has removed single-use utensils on site, and instead asks every team member, driver and journalist to bring their own dishes and wash up after themselves. As such, you'll see drivers like Tanner Foust walking around site with a neat set of McLaren-branded dishes.

While sustainability and equality are big focuses for Extreme E, it's still a race and serves up some great on-track action everywhere it goes. In Sardinia, it was a tough weekend for Andretti drivers Catie Munnings and Timmy Hansen, who suffered some serious damage that hit their chances of walking away with a sizable haul of points.

Instead of a traditional pit wall that you might see at a Formula 1 race, the teams monitor their progress from the Command Center. Inside this very dramatic tent, there's space for five teams including their representatives and the second driver waiting for their time in the Switch Zone.

It wouldn't be motorsport without a podium, and in Extreme E it's a pretty good one. The podium itself is open at the back, so you can see the scenery around the racetrack as the drivers take their steps up onto it. Then there are the trophies, which are made from recycled ocean plastics.

After all that racing, there's a sizable pile of body panels ripped up and ready for the trash. But, because this is Extreme E, these damaged parts aren't simply shattered panels of carbon fiber; instead they're composed of natural fibers.

After all that, the whole show is packed up and loaded back into the St Helena, including the cars and everything needed to build the paddock at the next location. Ahead of the next race, the St Helena will cross the Atlantic and head to Chile, where Extreme E will set up shop for its season finale at the end of November.