While Gen4 made a more formal arrival on the scene this week, via a glitzy media launch at Paul Ricard, plenty of questions remain about how the much more powerful, larger and heavier Gen4 Formula E cars will actually race.
The FIA's head of Formula E, Pablo Martino, told The Race that he believed rulemakers were "almost there" with the sporting framework that teams and drivers will race to in the new era beginning in December.
That looks set to include a mixture of what will effectively be sprint and feature races. Double-header events - which until now have featured two races run to largely the same format - will split those formats throughout what could be a 20-race calendar.
But some team principals and drivers have cautioned against what they believe could turn out to be exaggeratedly extreme races that place an overemphasis on energy saving - at least in the context of a car that is still being developed.
A meeting between teams and the FIA is taking place at Paul Ricard on Wednesday as the FIA and Formula E Operations finalise the framework for the sporting parameters of Gen4 races. A final submission of the race structure will be submitted at June's FIA World Motor Sport Council.
"Formula E today has its own assets which are really powerful and are really recognisable in motorsport now," reckoned Martino.
"These are part of the DNA of the championship, and we will continue building on that because we really firmly believe that it creates a fanbase, a strong racing environment, and it creates exciting racing until the very last minute, and it creates what is important and what makes Formula E relevant."
Martino added: "It's not really good to change radically what is working because the spectators are used to it, they know it and this is what they expect to see; we will see changes for sure in the weekend format a little bit but it will not be radically different, as the primary assets of Formula E will continue and will keep maintaining in the future."
At least five double-headers, all of which will host the sprint/feature race combination, are believed to be on the provisional 2026-27 calendar. These are expected to be Jeddah, Monaco, the Circuit of the Americas, Shanghai and Tokyo, the last of which is recently believed to have agreed a deal in principle to continue as a venue into the Gen4 era.
The Race also understands that the full Hermanos Rodriguez track in Mexico City is highly likely to be used instead of the truncated versions it has raced on for the last decade.
These tracks are expected to host sprint races with longer events but the cocktail of more useable energy at 51kWh but with a much larger power requirement.
"This [the sprint and feature races] is something that we are looking into because it's a really good opportunity for us with the new car to explore that route to have races where efficiency requirements are less important than in some others," said Martino.
"The car allows us to showcase in a race environment the pure performance of the car with a really low energy-efficiency requirement, so more a pure performance race and having some other races with a little bit more length, a little bit closer to the races that we are using today, so for sure that's an option."
Pit Boost energy top-ups, as they appear in the current rules, are set to continue in Gen4 and the attack mode feature, which Formula E pioneered in 2018, is also set be kept, albeit potentially with more scope for teams to use it creatively.
But some drivers and teams are known to be wary of making races too extreme in terms of energy saving or going completely flat-out, preferring a more compromised race length and distance in light of the extra power on offer - 600kW with the Gen4 car, which will be four-wheel drive - in relation to the usable energy.
Citroen driver Nick Cassidy told The Race that the actual format was "still a big unknown but ultimately Pit Boost is needed because the car is going to be super energy sensitive".
"When you go so much heavier [the Gen4 car will be 954kg], that's only natural. You've got more power, you've got more weight, so you're still going to be energy-sensitive. It's just a question of what that kind of does to the racing. Does that mean a pure Gen2 [flat-out] style of race, or does that mean a Portland [pack-race] style. That's what we've got to try to understand," added Cassidy.
Nissan team principal Tommaso Volpe meanwhile, told The Race that he believed innovations such as attack mode and Pit Boost were "something very strategic" and "amazing features of our sport".
"We have probably the best poly format in motorsport, from my point of view," said Volpe.
"So, all these ingredients, in a way, have to be combined in a simpler way, possibly separating things on different days, because otherwise, considering that the car is way more complex to manage, we risk having situations where teams struggle to really operate efficiently during the day."
