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When Emma, Tanner and the team hit the sandy Sardinia terrain for their track walk this week, it all felt very familiar… Although, it wasn’t exactly as they’d left it. It was much cooler, for a start, but there had also been some modifications and improvements made to the course, with XE having taken on board suggestions from each team – namely, a new start area.

It’s a unique scenario. Sardinia has been announced as the host for Rounds 7 and 8 this weekend, but it will not be exactly the same course as the one used in Rounds 5 and 6. The location remains the same, with the teams based in the Italian Army Training area at Capo Teulada in Sulcis-Iglesiente, but an adapted version of the layout has been designed for this event.

Hours of preparation back at the factory have gone into preparing the team for the new-look version of the circuit, but nothing quite compares to getting out onto the dirt.

“The change to the location of the starting line is the major one,” NEOM McLaren Extreme E Sporting Director Gary Paffett explains. “Otherwise, they will make some small adjustments, but it will fundamentally follow the same route. 

“Some areas of the circuit were rutting up, with quite big ruts in the soil and the earth. Other areas were quite bumpy with rooks close to the circuit, and some cars got punctures going over big rocks and things like that.

“This is the first season in Extreme E where we are having a lot of close wheel-to-wheel racing due to the change of format, where they moved away from the single-car timed sessions. In qualifying and the races, you now have five cars out there at once, so there is a lot more side-by-side racing and close contact.

“They’ve adapted the course to suit that and make it better for the racing we’re having this season. But those are relatively small changes compared to what they’ve done with the start.”

So, what exactly have they done with the start, and why will it have such a significant impact?

Previously, when the lights went out in Sardinia, the five-car grid drove down one of five different routes through the undergrowth, which were very narrow. Route three, in particular, provided a clear advantage, whilst others presented a distinct disadvantage.

Each team's route was roughly pre-determined by the location of their car on the start line, which was decided at random pre-event. Pick a bad position out of the hat, and your race was all but over before it had even begun. Thankfully, for Rounds 7 and 8 in Sardinia, this will longer be an issue, with a new start location mapped out, as well as a re-imagined way of deciding in which position you start the race.

“The start will be much more conventional with all five cars funnelling down to a corner off the line rather than having different lanes. The new start area will make it a lot more even and change the draw’s implications on the potential results.

“Last time out, if you had a poor lane choice, you could effectively write the day off – nearly, anyway. That is what hit us hard last time here because we drew a poor lane for Qualifying Heat 1, which affected our performance. This subsequently meant we were also handed a poor lane for Qualifying Heat 2 because your performance on the Saturday determines your lane for Sunday. So, suddenly, your whole day can be compromised.”

Even with the changes to the track and the regulations, many of the same challenges will apply, with many parts of the course remaining unchanged. Compared to other tracks on the calendar, the terrain in Sardinia is much flatter and narrower, with dry sand that can produce a heavy amount of dust for any car following another, impacting visibility.

One of the solutions from Extreme E has been to wet the sand, but this can have the opposite effect, causing mud that sticks to the screen, which - you guessed it - impacts visibility. Of course, there’s a straightforward solution: make sure you’re leading the race, but it would not be practical for any team to rely on leading a race from start to finish. And anyway, the competitiveness of the grid makes this almost impossible.

Ultimately, the teams that are the most prepared will have the greatest chance of success. The fact that we are racing in a location – albeit on an adapted version of the course - where we have recent experience in the current cars is a rarity in motorsport and means that there are considerable gains to be made from the work you do pre-race.

“What we have seen in Formula E is that when we have a race on a Sunday as well as on a Saturday, in the same location, the whole competition gets closer because everybody narrows down on the best setup and the best way of doing things,” Gary continues. “So, with this being our third and fourth races here, I expect the competitiveness to be even tighter than it normally is.

“One advantage is that you have similar jumps and bumps to before that you already know about. The type of surface, which is a big part of what we have to set the car up for, for traction, the ride of the car, etc., will be very similar. We can take a lot of learnings from the last time to help us going into this.

“As well as that, we’ve done a lot of analysis and a lot of work with the data on the engineering side of things to work out where we were good last time here and where we need to improve. We’ve been narrowing in on that. The drivers have spent a long time analysing the videos and the on-boards from the last event.

“In terms of actual preparation, we’ve requested a promo day on the Wednesday before the race weekend to capture content for our team and our team partners, so we’ll go over and run the car on a different course to the one we’ll be using in the sessions and the races. This will also allow the drivers to get a feel for the car again and to get back into the swing of things.

“As you know, the important thing in Extreme E is to hit the ground running. You’ve got to be on it from the very start because you get such little running. You really need to make the most of any track time you have.”

There’s also the uncontrollable change of the weather conditions. Thankfully, it will be much cooler than the previous round in Sardinia, where temperatures reached 35 degrees Celsius. This time around, as things stand, it is expected to be between 26 and 27, with some chance of rain. That won’t play a particularly prominent role in the car's setup, but it will make the conditions easier to work in. And for that reason, Gary and the team are very relieved.