Motorsport with electric cars, really?  This story begins quite a long way back, to be precise in the late afternoon of the 1955 24 hours race  in Le Mans – still known as the darkest moment in motorsport ever. More than 80 people were killed when a car flew into the crowd and as a consequence, Switzerland banned circuit motor racing thereafter for safety reasons. Now, more than sixty years later, the Swiss authorities changed their approach and gave green light for a Formula E race in the streets of Zürich. The reason why they did so is not quite clear to me: did they give permission because racing is safer today now? If so, I have to raise the question, why all other sorts of circuit racing are still banned? Or do they think, Formula E racing is safer than other forms of motorsport? Then I have to say, that safety precautions, especially for the spectators, were at some spots horrendous in the streets of Zürich and it was pure luck that no serious accident happened. It could easily have had tragic consequences as the crowd was at large parts of the circuit only a handful of meters away from the cars racing by with 200 km/h, protected by nothing more than concrete blocks about 1.50 meters high and a fence – what a hypocrisy…  Anyway, the race was warmly welcomed by a huge crowd of curious Swiss people who wanted to see electric race cars being driven through their city. Except of grandstand seats, the entrance was free of charge and the fans were overwhelmed by impressions – as I mentioned before: you could get extremely close to the track and as a consequence, the cars looked fast although they hardly did more than 200km/h. Let`s not talk about the sound and the noise of the vehicles, but the overall feeling I got of the cars going by though was slightly less worse than I have expected. Music was constantly played over the PA and so the place was never really silent. An event of such big dimensions (a crowd of 100.000 was expected – difficult to say if it were less or even more attendants) always requires a lot of manpower and so, 2.500 volunteers were recruited to make the event as smooth as possible. And I must say they did a great job! Everybody was very helpful, competent and polite. One per cent of these volunteers, exactly 24 of them, were trained as marshals two weeks before the race. Their job was to assist the professional marshals who were recruited from other race tracks (Sachsenring and Hungaroring for example). The newbies were trained in first-aid (burn treatment, reanimation, recovery position), radio communication, firefighting and as flag marshals. Though, firefighting was a bit of a show exercise, as there is no way to extinguish fire a burning electric car…  My buddy, let`s call him Hans, applied and got such a job as a volunteer marshal and I accompanied him to his education day at a training center north of Zürich. Professionals from “Autosport Schweiz” prepared the volunteers on a Saturday afternoon for things to come.  They made clear how important and responsible the work of a marshal is and that it`s serious business. Final instructions came on the day before the race, when every volunteer marshal was assigned to a group of professionals. They were told how to use the belts to remove a stranded car from the racetrack and they got the chance to see the cars for first time in the pit complex. Strangely enough, there were hardly any instructions how to deal with the distinctive features of an electric car but that was the pros` business. A track walk and final instructions from the race director made them ready for the big day. Hans was appointed as a flag marshal on turn no. 6, where he was in company with two experienced marshals from the Sachsenring in Germany. A bit of a letdown was that there was no PA and no video wall in this corner and it was tough for them to keep up to date with what was going on the rest of the circuit. Also, their sight towards the marshal post no.5 was blocked by banner ads being too big, so they had to be removed partly…  As it turned out, Hans spent a relatively quiet day in the sun, as there were hardly any incidents in his corner – most of his day consisted of waiting, which in his case was not a bad thing, as track activities were never interrupted by yellow or even red flags. The race itself was somehow disordered by several pilots receiving penalties for going too quick in the cobblestoned pitlane and it was finally won by reigning champion Lucas di Grassi from Brasil. Not only the spectators showed up in big numbers, also drivers from other race series and swiss celebs from show, politics and business were on place to represent themselves in the pitlane: to be in the public eye was the motto of the day. The overall impression of the whole event was pretty different from race-weekends a race fan used to know. It was more a social city-event with silent cars running through the streets. I am sure, a big part of the spectators would never take the effort of a let`s say 3 hour drive to a proper race track like Monza or Hockenheim to see these electric cars doing a race there. And exactly this makes the success of Formula E as it is today: FE comes to the cities where the people already are – the people would never, in such big numbers, come to Formula E on a proper racetrack – I am 100% sure about that. This is not a new approach in Motor-racing, but the whole success concerning spectator numbers of FE is based on it. It will be interesting to see how the series will progress and which direction it will take in the near future. I for my part still prefer combustion engines racing for quite a while and it will need much more than what I have seen in Zürich to draw my attention towards electrics…