Postponement of the start of the Gen3 Era in Formula E caused changes to the calendar, and Mexico City was chosen to replace Diriyah as the opening of the 2022/2023 season
The postponement of the start of the Gen3 Era in Formula E - to allow suppliers and customer teams more time to conduct development of their new cars - will also change the order of races on the Formula E calendar. Slated to open the championship again next year, the city of Diriyah will be replaced by Mexico City, which will host the first round of the World Championship in 2023.
This will be the first time that Diriyah will not host the championship opener since it became part of Formula E back in 2018. There have been seven races so far in the Arabian city, with three double rounds in 2019, 2020 and 2021, in addition to the single race in the inaugural year. Nyck de Vries and Sam Bird have won twice each, with one triumph for António Félix da Costa, Alexander Sims and Edoardo Mortara.
Thus, Formula E returns to Mexico - this time to open the championship - and the stage will be the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, which has hosted six of the eight races of the category in the country - the other two were in Puebla, due to the pandemic - but was never the opening round.
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"Originally, [Diriyah] was scheduled to be the first race, but as we had to postpone everything because of testing for Gen3, we were forced to move things around," Formula E co-founder and boss Alberto Longo revealed to English portal The Race. "That puzzle meant that Saudi Arabia couldn't be the first race, so we did what we could with the calendar," he admitted.
"Obviously, the interest from different cities around the world and the timing of when they can actually host Formula E, as well as taking into consideration many other things such as weather and all the challenges we encountered when setting the calendar mean that unfortunately, Saudi Arabia will not be the first race," he pointed out.
In the calendar configuration for the 2022/2023 season after the change advanced by Longo, it is possible to imagine that the Diriyah round will be the second of the championship - right after Mexico in January - followed by the debut of Formula E in Hyderabad, India - which is yet to be officially confirmed - as well as Cape Town, South Africa, and then the first eP in São Paulo on March 25.
Finally, the manager also said that the category is considering expanding the calendar for next year, with 14 races instead of the current ten: Diriyah, Rome, Berlin, New York, London, Seoul, Mexico City, Monaco, Jakarta, and Marrakech - with the first six hosting double rounds.
"We are in internal discussions about whether we will have an expansion in the number of cities we visit," Longo explained. "That is a fact. So this year we are going to ten. Next year it will be 12 or 13 events at least, with 14 at the most. We will still discuss if we will be aggressive like this or if we will hold back a bit more. Then we will grow again in the next season, the tenth, which will also be a great year for us.