we went to New York city,

and we're watching some freakin' Formula E.

- Hell, yeah!

(hoots)

- Thank you.

- [Woman] Am I gonna get in the episode?

- Maybe, if you sign a release.

Formula E might be one of the most polarizing

motor sports on the planet.

But my mission today is to get you stoked on it.

The ABB FIA Formula E Championship

is an open-wheel racing series.

11 teams field two cars each for a total field of 22 drivers

which includes some former Formula One drivers.

They race around short circuits,

and the first driver to cross the finish line

after 45 minutes, plus one lap, wins.

I love Formula E

and frankly want more people to watch it with.

Here are five reasons you should be watching Formula E.

Reason number one to watch Formula E,

these things are electric.

That's right, they run on lightning.

(growls) Lightning! (bolt blasts)

(farting) Lightning, lightning, lightning.

Look at me, I'm James (fake laughs).

All cars have a baseline power of 200 kilowatts

which is about 270 horsepower,

but they're good for a 2.8 second zero to 60

and a top speed of 174 miles an hour.

That's pretty sick.

(farts) All right, so.

One thing that I really love about any sort of racing

is the sound, and Formula E is definitely different.

It's not like a roaring engine

'cause they don't have engines.

They have electric motors,

but I'm actually pretty impressed

with how loud they are going around.

They're not like ear-splittingly loud

where you need ear muffs.

(electric motor whines)

But they have a very unique noise.

They kind of sound like the Covenant from Halo driving.

(machine hums)

That's a reference, Halo 3, the best one.

I don't wanna hear about Halo Reach.

The cars have a limited battery capacity,

and the drivers have to manage it to finish the race.

There's no swapping batteries in the middle of the race

which they kind of actually used to do.

They used to pit and then jump into a second identical car

half way through, they don't do that anymore.

The teams have to closely watch their car's energy levels

so they won't run out of juice before the end.

One example of energy mismanagement happened in February

at the Mexico City E-Prix.

An early red flag for a crash extended the race

by one lap, and the Nissan team miscalculated

how many electrons they had left

in their figurative electricity tanks.

The Nissan driver

(driver exclaims in foreign language)

who were running in third and fourth place

ran out juice at the beginning of the last lap,

and they ended up in 20th and 21st,

a very disappointing finish

because of a relatively simple mistake.

(driver exclaims in foreign language)

The second reason to watch Formula E,

it's a straight-up video game.

(funky music)

Drivers can get an extra boost of power during the race.

It can happen in two ways.

The first way is called attack mode

which is an extra 25 kilowatts that's picked up

by driving through an activation zone on the track.

25 kilowatts is like 30 extra horse power.

You know in a crash team racing,

the little boost areas before jumps?

It's kind of like that.

The activation zone is off of the racing line.

So the driver has to give up a little bit of lap time

and maybe even a position to collect the power boost,

but the boost itself could make up for it later in the race.

They don't have to use the power boost right there.

They can save it and use it later.

Every driver has to activate attack mode

a set number of times at each race.

How many activations they are and how long to boost last,

is different at every track,

and the officials don't announce them

until one hour before the race starts.

And that gives teams a very limited amount of time

to strategize how they're gonna use that to their advantage.

The second way to get a power bump,

and it's a big point of contention among Formula E fans,

is called fan boost.

Fans vote for their favorite drivers online

during the six days before a race

and up to five minutes after the races has started.

So the drivers won't even know if they'll get

that power boost until they're already

in the heat of battle.

The five racers with the most votes

get 40 to 50 kilowatts more power to use

just for five seconds during the second half of the race.

That's like 50 to 65 more horse power.

That's a lot.

Formula E is the only racing series

that has anything like this.

Spectators can tell when the drivers are using

one of the power boosts by the color of the LEDs

on the car's safety halo.

When attack mode is engaged, it lights up blue.

When fan boost is engaged, they light up magenta.

That way the fans can see each driver's

race strategy in action.

Attack mode has been a crowd pleasing

addition to the series, but a lot people think

fan boost is an unfair popularity contest

that dilutes the true spirit of racing.

My honest opinion, I think it's kind of corny

but also kind of cool.

Obviously, they want more fans to engage with the sport.

That totally makes sense.

But imagine if the MBA lowered one team's hoop a few feet

'cause more people voted for them.

There's Stoffel Vandoorne,

a.k.a., my bro.

Just kidding, we haven't met.

Fan boost is a new idea.

So I'm willing to see how far it goes.

If it doesn't work out in the long run, we'll just scrap it.

For now, it's kind of cool.

Reason numero tres, to watch Formula E

is that skill matters most.

Formula E is one of the only big racing series left

where the driver matters more than the car.

Look, I love Formula One.

But the best drivers can't win

if they're not in the best car.

I mean, sometimes they can,

but only if the best cars crash out.

In Formula E the cars are almost exactly the same.

The batteries are all the same.

And there are price caps on the power train

and chassis components to keep manufacturers

from trying to outspend each other to build a faster car.

(reggae music)

Something cool about Formula E is that they let the fans

walk onto the grid before the race.

There's really no other racing series that I can think of

that let's you do that.

Pretty rad.

It's very hot, by the way.

I'm sweaty, just sweaty right now.

Come here.

There's mechanics checking tire pressures right here.

We can see the breaking system.

Honestly, the breaks are a lot smaller

than I though they'd be.

Teams provide their own motors, inverters, and gear boxes,

and can tweak the suspension just a little,

but they all run the same Michelin Pilot Sport

all-season tires even down to the same exact tire pressures.

They've got tires that really resemble more

what you'd see on your own car.

They're very skinny.

I'm pretty sure the tires on my Mustang are about that wide.

Other racing series, the slicks have very fat profiles.

These cars handle more like your car would

than say other high profile open-wheel cars.

This makes the racing incredibly close.

And it means the power boosts I talked before

are that much more important.

Formula E has a ton of passing.

That's even more impressive given the fact that

all the races are run on narrow street courses.

Reason number four, the tracks.

So the crazy thing about Formula E is that all, all,

all of their courses are on street courses

which is, I think, different from

any other racing series in the world.

So what we're gonna do is take a lap in a BMW i8

and see one of these three courses is all about.

(upbeat music)

The street courses are only one to two miles long,

and they're really, really narrow

which makes passing pretty hairy.

Dude, thank you.

- Good, man.

- [Nolan] That was awesome.

(lost signal beep)

I think my phone fell back there.

My phone is in here somewhere.

- [Man] I will check the back for you.

- All right.

My phone is in the safety car somewhere.

We'll see (laughs).

(lost signal beep)

These courses are so narrow.

It's insane that they're gonna have like 20 plus cars

on the track at the same time.

There's a lot of action while being in drama,

and the results are super unpredictable.

There have been like 12 different winners in 15 races

so far this season.

It was insane.

There aren't too many other racing series out there

that can go a whole season without a clear winner

right up until the end, and Formula E is one of them.

The stakes are super high, and it keeps the suspense up

in every single race.

(upbeat dance music)

You know, it's pretty funny

being in the pit lane here,

being in the VIP areas

that we've been so graciously afforded.

A lot of side-to-side cheek kissing.

A lot of fancy people stuff going on.

Definitely don't feel like I belong here

'cause a, you know, I'm just a small town boy

in the big city.

I think what's so cool to me is how many people are here.

I didn't know that there was such a strong fan base

in Formula E.

Oh, no.

- [Man] It's the Michelin Man.

- Thick.

(plays back in slow motion) Thick.

That's weird.

That's inappropriate to say about the Michelin Man.

Anyway, as I was saying,

it's so cool to see so many different kinds of people

out here supporting this sport.

I can't imagine that it's easy to be a new motor sport.

Any kind of sport.

What if they made up a new kind of football?

They brought it here.

Where the hell is Alex?

There he is, there he is.

There's Alex.

It's so exciting to imagine

where the sport will go from here.

I'm really excited.

(chill music)

Reason number five to watch Formula E.

It's a weird one, and it also involves gaming.

Formula E recently launched the Formula E

Live Ghost Racing mobile game.

You can download it on your phone

and drive in actual races against the actual drivers.

The game takes data from the races and uses it

to recreate how things actually went down.