One month to go: Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 July, Sardinia will host the third of the five rounds of the 2023 Extreme E championship. The Island X Prix, co-organized and coordinated by the Automobile Club of Italy, with the support of the Region Sardinia, will include a double appointment, a novelty of the current championship which was tested in Sardinia last year. As in the previous two seasons, the international series recognized by the FIA and reserved for electric SUVs will land in the Army Training Area of Capo Teulada. The crews will compete with a challenging track about three kilometers long. After the sands of Saudi Arabia and the mud in Scotland, the riders will find high temperatures and a hard and compact surface, among rocks, bushes and fords dried up by the heat.
Ten teams in the race (including McLaren, Rosberg X Racing, Acciona Sainz, Lewis Hamilton's X44, Abt Cupra, Carl Cox Motorsport, Jenson Button JbXe and Andretti) and each will field a mixed man-woman crew who will equally alternate driving . The riders in the race were of the highest level, including Nasser Al Attiyah, Johan Kristoffersson, Mattias Ekström, Christine Gz, Laia Sanz, Cristina Gutiérrez and the Italian Tamara Molinaro. Since the series was launched, Nico Rosberg's team has stood out the most, with two victories in three races. The Italian date also gave the first historic success to the Americans of the N.99 Gmc Hummer Ev Chip Ganassi Racing, who had won the Island X Prix 1 in 2022. At the moment, Veloce Racing is leading the standings (80 points) with two victories, followed by Acciona | Sainz Xe Team (69)r from 2021 RxR champions. Defending the title will be Lewis Hamilton's team, X44 Vida Carbon Racing, currently fourth. In the season, there were three different winners in four races.
«It is great to return to Sardinia for rounds 5 and 6 of the third season», begins the founder and CEO of Extreme E Alejandro Agag, «Sardinia has already shown in the past that it is a very popular destination for riders and teams and has given us some fantastic races in the previous two editions it hosted. We expect even more in July 2023, with such a competitive 2023 line-up and such a closely contested championship, it will be a truly special event. Our Legacy Program continues, we will be announcing new projects ahead of the Island X Prix and, together with our partners, we are eager to see how existing ones develop. Extreme E is working closely with the Automobile Club of Italy, which co-organizes and coordinates the event, the Region of Sardinia and the Regional Tourism Department, in addition to the Ministry of Defense and the Italian Army, to create an electrifying weekend of racing».
«We are very pleased that this by now traditional appointment with Extreme E at Capo Teulada continues, where a new extreme discipline is practiced in a beautiful mix of extraordinary and wild nature destined for highly sophisticated machines from a technical point of view and powered by electric motors », relaunches the president of ACI Angelo Sticchi Damiani, «motorsport is always a testing ground for manufacturers, it subjects cars and new products to very demanding tests which will then be used in series production and it is important that in Sardinia there is this combination of sport, nature and technological innovation, especially when it comes to zero-emission engines. Extreme E offers a remarkable and unique show and seeing, in the two previous editions, the cars almost flying over the natural roughness of the Teulada terrain was extraordinary. It is a source of pride to have created, with the Automobile Club of Italy, Aci Sassari and its president Giulio Pes of San Vittorio, the conditions for which the series conceived by Alejandro Agag has found in Sardinia, thanks to the support of Regional Council, the president Christian Solinas and the regional councilor for Tourism Gianni Chessa, the conditions to be able to compete in one of the five stages of the series. Thanks also go to the Italian Army, which has always had a great vision and made the Capo Teulada Training Area available, understanding the environmental and technological development reasons well, a response for which I am particularly grateful».