Tag: Veloce Racing

Veloce dominates first Hydro X Prix Final as rivals hit trouble

E.ON NEXT Veloce Racing claimed its first win of the 2024 Extreme E season, dominating the first Final of the Hydro X Prix weekend as its rivals hit trouble in Scotland. Molly Taylor began the four-lap main event on Saturday with a clean getaway, …

E.ON NEXT Veloce Racing claimed its first win of the 2024 Extreme E season, dominating the first Final of the Hydro X Prix weekend as its rivals hit trouble in Scotland.

Molly Taylor began the four-lap main event on Saturday with a clean getaway, emerging from the first two turns in the lead. Behind her, Rosberg X Racing’s Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinky and Laia Sanz of Acciona Sainz came together, the contact resulting in right rear damage to the RXR machine, immediately taking it out of contention and opening the door for Andretti Altawkilat’s Timmy Hansen to get by.

Out in front, Sanz closed on Taylor during the remainder of the first lap, but the Veloce driver responded, dropping Sanz into Hansen’s clutches. From there, Hansen hit the back of Sanz twice, first at Waypoint 7, then again at Waypoint 22 – this time resulting in the dropping of a waypoint flag.

The pair survived both incidents with only superficial bodywork damage, but the collisions allowed Taylor to further extend her lead. She held a 2.137s advantage over Sanz when she came into the mid-race driver switch.

With Kevin Hansen now behind the wheel of the Veloce machine and Fraser McConnell taking over the Acciona Sainz car, the battle became closer, with McConnell reducing the gap to just 1.742s at the end of the third lap.

Hansen quickly responded with session-best times in the first two sectors of the final lap, and although McConnell was once again able to close in – ultimately finishing the race 1.435s adrift – he couldn’t overhaul the younger Hansen brother.

Catie Munnings brought the Andretti entry home in third, while RXR was classified third after initially getting going again, but retiring in the Switch Zone before Johan Kristoffersson could take over from Ahlin-Kottulinsky.

HYDRO X PRIX I FINAL RESULTS

In the redemption race, Legacy Motor Club’s Patrick O’Donovan and Gray Leadbetter won from SUN Minimeal’s Timo Scheider and Klara Andersson as both teams took their best results in Extreme E so far.

Scheider gave SUN Minimeal an early lead, but contact with JBXE’s Amanda Sorensen at the second waypoint on lap one sent Scheider into the track-lining hay bales, opening the door for O’Donovan to close in.

After getting by Scheider, then taking a look up the inside of Sorensen going into Waypoint 17, O’Donovan finally moved to the fore at Waypoint 20 towards the end of the first lap, and it was a position they would not relinquish, with Leadbetter bringing the car home 3.533s ahead of Andersson in the SUN Minimeal following the mid-race driver swap.

JBXE was classified third, albeit just under 1m27s back after contact between Sorensen and Scheider forced them to briefly stop. NEOM McLaren meanwhile finished bottom of the pile after a freak incident where the safety cut-off on the car – being driven by Mattias Ekstrom – was struck by a rock, which ended the team’s race before the second waypoint.

HYDRO X PRIX I REDEMPTION RACE RESULTS

Earlier in the day, Veloce got its event off to the best possible start after winning both its qualifying heats – those wins coming after setting the pace in practice on Friday.

It wasn’t totally straightforward, though. The team was the victim of heavy contact from SUN Minimeal at the start of Q1, race one, and while SUN went onto win the race, it was hit with a 10s penalty for the contact, dropping it to third in the classification.

That wasn’t the only mark on that team’s start to the day, with Andersson suffering a dramatic roll after crossing the finish line. While the car looked totally destroyed, it was repaired in time for Q2, where the team took second in Q2, race two, behind RXR – who had a troublesome Q1 race with a downed flag and a spin – and ahead of Andretti which won the other Q1 heat.

Veloce’s win means that it keeps its record of being the only team to finish on the podium in every round so far this season, while it is also its second consecutive victory on Scottish soil after its triumph in the second Final of last year’s Hydro X Prix – a race in which Andretti finished second.

As well as being its second consecutive podium in Scotland, third place for Andretti was both its second podium on the bounce this season.

With the round win, a brace of heat wins, and the fastest super sector time, Veloce takes a maximum score of 29 points from Saturday, moving it to the championship lead on 60 points. RXR’s tricky day drops it from first to third in the points, with Acciona Sainz moving up to second, while Andretti, McLaren, Legacy M.C., SUN Minimeal, and JBXE all maintain their positions.

Championship standings

1. E.ON NEXT Veloce Racing 60 points
2. ACCIONA | SAINZ XE Team 57 points
3. Rosberg X Racing 54 points
4. Andretti Altawkilat Extreme E 47 points
5. NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team 34 points
6. LEGACY MOTOR CLUB 28 points
7. SUN Minimeal Team 18 points
8. JBXE 16 points

Despite Extreme E title near-miss, Veloce Racing inspired by 2023 rise

“If you’d have told me last year that we would be P3 in the championship with three wins – joint top amount of wins – I would have taken it,” says Veloce Racing CEO Dan Bailey – who was in a surprisingly positive mood about the Extreme E season …

“If you’d have told me last year that we would be P3 in the championship with three wins — joint top amount of wins — I would have taken it,” says Veloce Racing CEO Dan Bailey — who was in a surprisingly positive mood about the Extreme E season considering his team fell at the final hurdle in its quest to become champions of the electric off-road series.

But, given the massive steps the team has taken this year, it shouldn’t be a surprise at all.

After claiming one podium result in two years and featuring a revolving door of high-profile drivers, the team realized it needed to make big changes. Ahead of the 2022 finale, it brought in Season 1 champion Molly Taylor and World Rallycross front-runner Kevin Hansen. Both drivers were tied to long-term deals, signaling the team’s intent. And it immediately yielded results, with the team making it to the final for the first time in 2022 on the pair’s first outing with the team.

It was the perfect springboard for 2023, which began in Saudi Arabia with a maiden victory and a second place the very next day. Veloce had gone from being underachievers to being the team to beat overnight. Except it wasn’t overnight — it was a process that began midway through the preceding season.

Prior to Taylor and Hansen’s arrival, the team had a run of seven events across 2021 and ’22 without making the final, with the two Sardinia rounds in ‘22 — where the team had hoped to rebound and kickstart its campaign a car-destroying crash in Saudi Arabia for the second straight year — proving pivotal for the team’s need to reset.

“I think Sardinia last year was a low point for our team and we took some fairly brutal decisions as to what we needed to change to be competitive,” Bailey explains to RACER. “It included not just the drivers but the management structure of the whole team and this year you’ve really seen that come to fruition with how we’ve performed.”

Colin McMaster/Motorsport Images

The changes to the team came amid evolution for the series as well. Originally envisioned as something of a longer-distance formula with single- and multi-car elements, Extreme E transitioned to, and then settled on more of a rallycross-esque format.

“I think the series changed a bit from what we initially thought the skill set would be, which is probably more Dakar spec, really big tracks, changing terrain, which led us to go for the likes of Lance [Woolridge, a multiple cross-country rally champion] who is a fantastic driver, just has a slightly different skillset to the likes of Kevin,” Bailey explains. “As the series has evolved, it’s moved to a little bit more of a rallycross spec skill set.

“We’ve had to make decisions to ensure that we become this competitive. We made some decisions with drivers and certain team members which didn’t necessarily fit the series as to what we expected it to be, but I’m proud of the fact we reacted and responded and got the right people in for that.

“And that’s not to say the people we had in before weren’t right for what we thought the series was — the series has evolved and we had to evolve with that.”

Hansen feels that when he arrived at the team, the key ingredients were in-place, but it needed to work on its execution, and that a comfortable working relationship with Taylor enabled them to fast-track the outfit’s development.

“Me and Molly came in [and] we really clicked and progressed so much,” Hansen says. “Together with the team, we’ve really found our match, which is a really nice feeling

“This season has just been so natural for us to go out there and do our thing. We’ve been very constructive and to the point with what we want to do. We had some reality checks for sure, but that’s part of building a winning team.”

Veloce’s Molly Taylor and Kevin Hansen celebrate their win in Chile earlier this month. Andrew Ferraro/Motorsport Images

Those reality checks included broken windshield wipers and power steering gremlins in Sardinia, where the team made the final only once in four attempts; and in Chile where, on the penultimate day of the season, crash damage and resultant mechanical issues stopped them from competing for a win — a result they would ultimately get a day later once their championship fate had already been sealed.

“I still believe that without the mechanical issues that we had, we would have been in a position to try and win the championship,” Bailey insists. “We did everything within our power to be successful, but importantly it was within our power.

“All we can do is maximize the situation in front of us. Every time we’ve had a situation, we’ve maximized it. So you can’t get too caught up in the external factors that can affect the team, you just have to be fully focused on what you can do — and in this series more than most, because the amount of external factors in this series are more than any other racing series in the world.”

Rumors are rife about who’s going where in Extreme E for next season, but Veloce will be retaining Taylor and Hansen — one of only two teams yet confirmed to be continuing with its 2023 drivers along with Andretti Altawkilat, which fields Hensen’s brother Timmy along with Catie Munnings. It’s Veloce’s hope that the continuity will once again give the team a head start like it had going into this year.

“We’re going to have the same drivers, the same engineering outfit — we’re completely set for next year, which is why we made the fairly big decision to change our drivers and some of our team personnel before the end of last year,” Bailey says. “I think that with continuity, as long as you’ve got talent, you’ve got a better chance of success — and for next year there’s nothing that I would want to change.”

While the team will be picking up from where it left off, Hansen emphasizes that doesn’t mean it will get complacent.

“Obviously we will not stand still — we will try and make any adjustments necessary to make sure to be as close to perfect as we can be as a team, and work really hard over the winter,” he adds. “Extreme E is so spread out, you need to work hard between every round — it’s the same amount of time to Season 4 Race 1 as it was to Season 3 Race 4, so it’s really really a different type of championship.

“I look forward to the winter to build and improve and I think we have a nice sweet tooth after winning the final round of the season. It really puts a smile on everyone’s faces to have the energy and the passion to work all winter long.”