Formula E toasted another tumultuous race last Saturday in Sao Paulo. In terms of quality of racing and that perfect media friendly bonus – a massive shunt whereby the driver emerges unscathed – it was a success.
Pepe Marti even topped off the whole drama by wielding a fire extinguisher to help marshals put out his utterly atomised Kiro Porsche 99X Electric.
Twenty-four hours prior, when proverbial extinguishers were needed to dampen down the frustration of seeing free practice one cancelled, it was all a very different picture indeed.
Sat in the main straight grandstand awaiting update after update The Race and friends were at least in touch with paddock insiders as to what was going. Either side of us though were around 100 FIA Girls on Track delegates and sundry other observers looking baffled as to why the cars were being caged within their own pits.
The problem, one that created a lame false start to Formula E's final Gen3 season, was a break in a fibre optic connection coming into the circuit. This was driving its radio provider MRTC to near despair. Along with support engineers, the MRTC and Formula E Operations staff were able to fix the issue fully in time for an extended session to start very early on race day morning.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told The Race that the problem "wasn't race-threatening, in a sense that a race would have still gone ahead if that had been the issue.
"Not ideal let's put it this way but fortunately, they did a retest at 6.30am [on race day morning] and everything was working perfectly," added a relieved Dodds.
Of course, because it was a free practice session, one could argue that no one was watching anyway, which wouldn't have been that far from the truth, such is the low-key nature of such sessions. But for those that had travelled halfway across the world, powered by their own fuel of anticipation upon the dawn of a new Formula E season, it felt a particularly flat (false) start to the campaign.
That flat feeling was, to some extent anyway, already there because the bigger picture was that Formula E's season 12 launch was taking place on the same weekend as Formula 1's closest multi-driver title fight for nearly a decade and a half.
Dodds attempted to put a positive spin on this.
"The pre-race reach and noise around this race for us is about three times the level it was at last year, so, much, much, much higher," said Dodds.
"That's a combination of lots of things, including helpful Sao Paulo staff, Felipe Drugovich in a car, lots of news about Gen4 coming, a bit of news around team entry with Porsche.
"But I also think the F1 stuff will also be helping it, because I think there's a lot of noise about motorsport."
It's difficult to see and gauge this. Were F1 fans warming themselves up for the Lando Norris-Max Verstappen-Oscar Piastri title fight by tuning in to see Jake Dennis, Pascal Wehrlein, Oliver Rowland et al? A sparky amuse-bouche before the big feast. It feels unlikely.
Judgement will, at best, be reserved on that one but Dodds' comment felt impulsively optimistic to a significant degree.
Then there was a bit of the age-old Formula E fantasy of F1 drivers potentially looking over the fence to see if the grass was indeed greener. Here, Dodds is far from the first CEO to suggest a current F1 star will 'go electric'.
Time was when Alejandro Agag would scatterlogically spin erratic rumours about Fernando Alonso's next career moves. Really, this was stuff that would make even Don King blush but amazingly some bought it.
Yet, Dodds is showing signs of re-animating the trend, when he says: "There's a lot of talk about if Yuki [Tsunoda] lost his seat, will he be looking at things like Formula E with the Japan race?"
The only two drivers of note, who came straight from F1 drives into Formula E were Jean-Eric Vergne and Felipe Massa. The former was much more effective than the latter but to suggest now a decade later, that a Formula E team might be interested in paying an underperforming F1 driver like Tsunoda to drive, feels very much like cheapening the stellar grid FE presently has.
But back to the date clash. It surely can't happen again, can it? You bet it can.
"I think there's just a lot of noise circling, so it's a blessing and a curse," reckoned Dodds of the F1 clash.
"I'd love people to be more focused on this, not so distracted by it. I get questions on Formula E, and then a final one, which is always, so who do you think is going to win tomorrow in Formula 1? But I quite like the fact that there's a lot of noise around motorsport."
In 12 months' time there is in fact every chance that the same clash will happen again. The Race understands that the pre-season Valencia test for the start of Formula E's Gen4 era may happen in the second week of November and that Sao Paulo is likely to be the opening race again on December 5. Which is when the 2026 F1 season will be closing in Abu Dhabi, again.
So, Formula E's biggest upgrade in hardware, and its most notable step in pace and performance, may again be put into the shadows by an F1 title fight.
Surely the promoters would try to do everything in their power to avoid that and benefit from a clearer, cleaner weekend? It feels like a no-brainer. But Dodds describes why it's not that simple from a practical perspective.
"I've been going through calendar options today with the team," said Dodds.
"As street racing - because we still have a lot of street racing in our championship - it's much more complex because it's not the same as a bigger circuit [saying] 'there's a calendar date, we'll put that out for years, that's all done'.
"We're trying to avoid cultural moments, like you can't be here [Sao Paulo] during Carnival, and obviously Ramadan in Jeddah.
"At the same time trying to avoid Le Mans, Indy 500, F1 races, so it becomes like a big game of chess.
"But we only have one opportunity to launch a new generation of car, so we're very mindful about where we do that and when we do that.
"We'll try and give it as much of its own noise as possible."
Another calendar curveball is that Formula E is also facing some big decisions about which tracks will have to be modified to accommodate the larger, heavier and much faster Gen4 cars, of which there will be 24 next season with the addition of Opel and the second Porsche factory team.
"I think there's certain tracks that you can guarantee will show the car off to its fullest potential and the facilities made," says Dodds.
"If you look at Mexico, Miami Hard Rock, Jeddah, these are circuits where the car is going to look unbelievable.
"There are other circuits like Tokyo. If you literally put it on the existing Tokyo circuit as it is today, it's going to be quite complicated. But we have the flexibility to change that layout and fiddle around with that circuit a bit.
"The one where clearly it doesn't work is London, because of Turns 3 and 4 and the tight bottleneck.
"I think most of the others simulate [fine] but it's not just about 'do the cars race well on the track?' Do we fill the grandstands? Does the car race well on the track? Is the time of year right? Is the weather good?"
Questions, questions, questions. Dodds and Formula E have to find a lot of answers in 2026. Possibly the most important of which is how it can begin its fourth, and many believe the most important and game changing, era with at the very least the motorsport world knowing it's happening at all.
