For many of Japan’s famously passionate motorsports fans, the Tokyo E-Prix on Saturday was their first taste of electric car racing, and the early reviews appeared positive as a competitive weekend nearly produced a win for home favorites Nissan.
Formula E’s quieter cars and the intimate 2.6-kilometer street circuit around Tokyo Big Sight — the first time a motor race has been held on public roads in Japan — gave the E-Prix a much different feel than Formula One’s Japanese Grand Prix, held at Suzuka Circuit in a rural area of Mie Prefecture.
Suzuka’s countryside vistas were replaced with towering Tokyo office buildings and condominiums, while the track itself had a far smaller footprint than the 5.8-km Suzuka Circuit. The narrow circuit and short distance between the stands and the track also brought the fans closer to the cars, which hit speeds of well over 200 kilometers per hour at various stages of the lap.