A secret clear the air meeting between Dan Ticktum and Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds took place the week after the Cupra Kiro driver’s Mexico City E-Prix rant in an effort to rationalise his post-race comments.
The Race can reveal that Ticktum’s outburst immediately after being taken out of the event in a five-car melee was met with immediate concern from Formula E’s promoters, leading to the face-to-face meeting at Formula E Operations London offices.
Those comments included telling The Race at the time that "the stewarding level in this championship at the moment is just dreadful, so everyone is driving like arseholes. There's loads of half moves, loads of lunges, not necessarily all the driver's fault, really. It's just not being policed properly, and it's just like a rental car race."
He also added that he “didn’t know in what other championship in the world that you can hit another driver up the arse and they lose a few positions and you don't get anything for it. It's just a joke."
Additionally, Ticktum also told his race engineer via the team radio, as he drove back to the pits to retire, that it was "pathetic” and added “I've had enough of this! It's not a category of talent."
It is believed that the core of the disappointment from Formula E was Ticktum’s overt criticism of the championship, although the FIA is also known to have been concerned by his fury at the stewards’ decision not to hold anyone accountable for not only the accident that ended his Mexican race but also for the shunt at the start of the Sao Paulo E-Prix in December where Nyck de Vries gave him a puncture at the first corner.
Dodds denied that Ticktum was beckoned to appear at Formula E’s HQ, saying that “he wasn't summoned at all, but he, off his own initiative, came and saw me, which was, actually, respect to him for that, because that's not always an easy thing to do."
“Dan and I were in some dialogue after the exploits of Mexico, but it was Dan on his own initiative that jumped in his car and drove and asked if he could come and see me face to face in the office, because he wanted to talk to me.”
Dodds described Ticktum’s language as “pretty extreme”, adding that Formula E “was a family sport, and, the stuff that goes out on the radio is publicly available, and people can pick up on it, as they did in this case, and publish it.
“He used language that he wasn't proud of, so that's one thing, and we would prefer he didn't use. And the second is that he chose to express his opinions, and they are his opinions, and he’s allowed to have them.
“But he chose to express them publicly before expressing them privately to some of the people that he was talking about. I think, in hindsight, he realised maybe there's a process he should go through first before choosing to put those out more publicly.”
Ticktum's team's view
Ticktum’s headline hitting comments are far from new for the only team with which he has driven in Formula E – Cupra Kiro, formerly known as NIO 333 and ERT.
Several individuals have worked with Ticktum to try to further enhance his potential with them, these include experienced sporting insiders such as Roberto Costa and Gerry Convy, the latter working all of last season with Ticktum. This season Gary Paffett is heading up the sporting department of the team.
Speaking to The Race in Miami yesterday, team principal Russell O’Hagan contextualised the latest controversy, saying that “we're four and a bit years into working with Dan, so we've tried lots of different things over the years to be tighter with him, loosen up on the reins and different things work at different times.
“Historically, we were always dealing with a frustration of underperformance. Last year, we kind of had the freedom that maybe the expectations of what we could achieve were not so great and then being the underdogs and being able to have a lot of those high moments.
“Now, I think the frustrations have almost reached a new level because there's a higher degree of expectation. So, we're working on that with him. I think with Dan, there's not often a sort of wrong or right answer. We just kind of take it day by day and understand new things.”
Ticktum’s character has been leant on heavily by the team’s own social media, and to some extent by Formula E’s own publicity efforts too. This has been something that has been carefully thought of and positioned in recent seasons.
But the overt criticism of the stewarding, and also initially his anger at those he felt had ended his race in Mexico, triggered the senior team to address the situation amid some pressure from the promoters.
“Dan has his own opinions. It's very hard for us to put ourselves in the shoes of the drivers in terms of the sheer level of frustration of what happens, but also from the way they see in the championship,” added O’Hagan.
“I have the privilege of being in lots of meetings where we see the way the FIA think about regulations, the way they write them, the way they interpret them, and we see so much stuff that goes into it.
“I think for the drivers, they don't get to see all that. So sometimes I get more frustrated because they can't see all of the background efforts that go into it.”
