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Comment by kayoone | Hacker News Reader

I went to the Formula E Grandprix in Berlin last year. I am a pretty big F1 fan, watching most of the races and know whats going on but Forumla-E was actually pretty bland and boring, i believe mostly due to missing any kind of engine noise. It kind of feels like very fast soapboxes racing around (not nearly as fast as F1 though).

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Just wondering, have you ever attended a F1 race in person? I ask because after watching WTCC for a long time, when I attended my first live race I found it pretty boring as well. Watching on TV allows me to follow the race, and I missed that a lot when attending live.

Same here. It has zero appeal for motorsport fans. Maybe there is some new audience for this in the future, but right now it's probably more about technology demonstration.

(I don't disagree with this being great technology, I would love to have quiet cities, what we do to the space we live in right now is an abomination in my view)

One issue with Formula E is that the city street courses are really boring race tracks.

If you look at the recordings from their pre-season "dress rehearsal" from Donington Park (available in YouTube), it was magnificent racing. Much better than any of the proper races they had.

There is work to be done to make Formula E interesting. I know I'll be watching RoboRace, but probably not the current season.

I was surprised to find how much the sounds of the engine added to my general enjoyment of the racing.

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