Monday this week marked a year to the day since the Formula E team now known as Kiro but then called ERT packed away its equipment at Portland after drivers Sergio Sette Camara and Dan Ticktum had laboured to non-descript positions well outside the top 10.
The team was anonymous on track through much of the 2024 season and Portland was no exception.
But off the track things were actually much worse. Debt was being piled up, ERT's licence was on the verge of being handed back to the promoter, and there didn't seem to be any future for it at all.
Then, at Portland, something remarkable happened. It triggered a series of events and deals that not only saved the team but meant less than one year later it stood atop the podium.
This is the timeline of Formula E's most expansive born-again, doom-to-delight story, one that became a stunning fairytale in Jakarta last month.
February 26 2013
Team China Racing (TCR) becomes the second team, after the stillborn Drayson Racing entity, to be announced as an entrant in the nascent FIA Formula E Championship. It is headed by Chinese entrepreneur Steven Liu, who had been involved in the A1GP Team China project team from 2005-08.
July 2015
Against significant odds the TCR team wins the first ever Formula E championship with Nelson Piquet Jr after victories at Long Beach and Moscow.
The team gains investment from NEXTEV/NIO (a nascent Chinese manufacturer) but goes on to have several lean years - with Oliver Turvey, Tom Dillmann, Luca Filippi, Ma Qing Hua and Tom Blomqvist among its drivers, and an overly ambitious two-motor design concept for some of those years.
September 2019
After a disastrous 2018-19 season the NIO Formula E team is acquired by the Hong Kong/China-based Lisheng Sports and Gusto Engineering entities, becoming the NIO 333 Formula E Team.
It achieves little success in the next four seasons, usually opting for powertrains delivered by a collection of outside suppliers, and eventually being rebranded ERT.
June 13 2024
The day it was announced Liberty Global had acquired Formula E shares, previously held by Warner Brothers Discovery since March 2015, can essentially be thought of as the 'Big Bang' moment for ERT's survival.
Ironically just two weeks prior to this ERT team boss Alex Hui and other senior ERT personnel are in Shanghai and are on a kind of road show to try to interest Chinese manufacturers into investing. Formula E is doing the same with a delegation from BYD, Xiaomi, Lynk & Co, Zeekr, and IM Motor among others wined and dined, briefed and sold the Formula E vision.
Nothing tangible comes from it for ERT and it heads to Portland for the next rounds having not scored any points in the previous five races, with Mahindra and Abt Cupra about to jump it and leave it bottom of the points table. More than that, the team is running out of time and money to stay afloat in Formula E.
The deal brought Liberty Global's total share of ownership to 65% and would mean the media behemoth finally taking a controlling interest in Formula E, in addition to its Formula 1 commitment and growing interest in MotoGP.
June 29 2024
First meetings are held between The Forest Road Company, an asset management and securities group based in Los Angeles, and ERT.
Hui gets the contact via links to Liberty Global and holds meetings with Forest Road's Jeremy and Zach Tarica, the managing director and owner/founder of Forest Road respectively. Interest is immediate but negotiations on a buy-in go through a long due-diligence phase, which stretches through the summer.
During this period, ERT faces intense financial issues, including a probable non-payment of staff in October should a deal not be finalised.
October 2024
The Forest Road acquisition of ERT, which encompasses Ares Management and capital via co-founders David Kaplan and Bennett Rosenthal, was concluded and announced on October 15.
In the background, two other key ERT figures are working hard on two other important constituent parts. Chief operating officer and deputy team principal Russell O'Hagan has long since been liaising with Porsche and in particular Florian Modlinger for almost a year.
Porsche is freshly smarting from losing the teams' and manufacturers' titles to big rival Jaguar. It wants to solidify its customer strength as the relationship with Andretti continues to go through irritable phases for both parties. The time is right for a second Porsche customer.
The Porsche 99X Electric 2024 spec package for what's about to become Kiro is confirmed on the same day that the Forest Road acquisition is announced.
In parallel, business development consultant Jon Wilde is nurturing and monitoring Cupra as it recalibrates from an association with the Abt team that became difficult due to the uncompetitive traits of its customer Mahindra car for much of the initial two-season first Gen3 homologation.
Cupra is on the cusp of leaving Formula E but its sporting lead, Xavi Serra, persuades the board to continue. Wilde is a vital component in getting this over the line just after the pre-season test at Jarama in early November, where Porsche affiliated David Beckmann replaces Sette Camara as team-mate to Ticktum.
The Race understands that Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds played a key role in getting Cupra to stay in Formula E with the new entity too.
June 21 2025
After a fractious but promising start to the 2025 season, with several issues curtailing races, Ticktum starts the Tokyo E-Prix second on the grid and takes his first podium with a starring third position in race two.
A month later Ticktum wins the Jakarta E-Prix, his first victory, Cupra Kiro's maiden win, and the licence's first almost a decade to the day since Piquet won the Moscow E-Prix in June 2015.
"There were a couple of reasons that led to this opportunity for us," Jeremy Tarica told The Race last week.
"But ultimately, as Forest Road, an opportunistic investment firm with a lot of experience around media and entertainment, we just thought the asymmetry here was really interesting.
"That was because the fundamentals of the team, while they haven't been given good fortune and resources over the years, they do have a really solid team, and we loved getting to know them."
Forest Road has in many ways been the saviour of the team and in some ways the perfect owner. Collaborative rather than prescriptive, it has allowed the specialists in the team to dictate their own rhythm of adjustment to several new key ingredients to their new existence. It gelled and it worked sooner than anticipated.
"We expected and wanted to believe that this team could be capable of great performances on track," added Tarica.
"I just frankly didn't think it was going to happen this soon!"
