The 2023 Cape Town ePrix was a

Formula E Formula E, officially the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, is an open-wheel single-seater motorsport championship for electric cars. The racing series is the highest class of competition for electrically powered single-seater racing cars ...

electric car race was held at the Cape Town Street Circuit in the city of

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

on 25 February 2023. It served as the fifth round of the

2022–23 Formula E season The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline (typography), baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally l ...

. As of the 2024–25 season, it remains the only Formula E race held in

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

Background

History

Initially planned to be held in

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

, the race was canceled for unknown reasons likely related to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Though not initially featured on the 2023 calendar, it was introduced after the cancellation of the

Seoul ePrix The 2022 Seoul ePrix, formally known as the 2022 Hana Bank Seoul E-Prix, was a pair of Formula E electric car races staged at the Seoul Street Circuit in the Jamsil Sports Complex, Seoul, South Korea, on 13 and 14 August 2022. They serve ...

Track

A long

street circuit A street circuit is a motorsport race track, racing circuit composed of temporarily closed-off public roads of a city, town or village, used in motor racing, motor races. Airport Runway, runways and Taxiway, taxiways are also sometimes part of ...

was laid out in Cape Town's Waterfront district, near Signal Hill. The track was believed to be "one of the fastest on the calendar". In total, the track had 12 turns.

Championship standings

Pascal Wehrlein Pascal Wehrlein (; born 18 October 1994) is a German and Mauritian racing driver, who competes in Formula E for Porsche. In formula racing, Wehrlein competed under the German flag in Formula One from to , and won the 2023–24 Formula E Worl ...

entered the fifth round of the season as the points leader in the Drivers' Championship by 18 points after

Jake Dennis Jake Dennis (born 16 June 1995) is a British racing driver, who competes in Formula E for Andretti Global, Andretti and serves as a factory driver for BMW in motorsport, BMW. Dennis won the 2022–23 Formula E World Championship with Andretti. ...

, who was only 6 points behind going into

Hyderabad Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...

did not finish after having his rear wing clipped by

René Rast René Rast (; born 26 October 1986) is a Germans, German professional racing driver and the 2017 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, 2017, 2019 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, 2019 and 2020 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, 2020 DTM champion. He last compete ...

. TAG Heuer Porsche leads the Teams' Championship by 23 points over Avalanche Andretti.

Summary

After

Lucas di Grassi Lucas Tucci di Grassi (born 11 August 1984) is a Brazilian racing driver, who competes in Formula E for Lola Yamaha ABT. In formula racing, di Grassi competed in Formula One in , and won the 2016–17 Formula E Championship with Abt. In endu ...

suffered a rear suspension failure in practice, all four Mahindra M9Electro chassis were withdrawn from the event with concerns about defective wishbones.

Sam Bird Sam Jamie Bird (born 9 January 1987) is a British people, British professional racing driver who is currently driving for McLaren#Formula E, NEOM McLaren in Formula E. He won the LMP2 title at the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship, and was ...

crashed in qualifying and did not start the race.

Classification

(All times in SAST)

Qualifying

Qualifying took place at 11:40AM on 25 February.

Qualifying duels

Overall classification

Race

The race began at 16:03 on 25 February. Notes: * – Pole position. * – Fastest lap. * – Started from the pit lane.

Standings after the race

;Drivers' Championship standings ;Teams' Championship standings * Notes: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

Impact

It was estimated by a

city councillor A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, borough counc ...

that around would be brought to Cape Town from the event and those travelling to the city for the event. As well as being held in conjuction with the African Green Economy Summit, the event was on the same weekend as the 2023 Kyalami 9 Hours.

Notes

References

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FIA Formula E World Championship Formula E, officially the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, is an open-wheel single-seater motorsport championship for electric cars. The racing series is the highest class of competition for electrically powered single-seater racing cars ...

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2023 São Paulo ePrix , - style="text-align:center" , width="35%", Previous race:
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2023 Catastrophic natural disasters in 2023 included the Lists of 21st-century earthquakes, 5th-deadliest earthquake of the 21st century 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, striking Turkey and Syria, leaving up to 62,000 people dead; Cyclone Freddy ...

Cape Town ePrix Cape Town ePrix