Coming off an exciting second year where only nine points separated the top two teams after the season’s seven races, the 2026 E1 Electric Speedboat Championship Series kicked off in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with last year’s 4th place finisher overall leaping to an early top spot.
Listen to this article as a podcastLaunched in Jeddah in January 2024, the E1 Series features ten teams racing the one design ‘RaceBird’ all-electric hydrofoiling speedboats at events held in top international ports and waterways. Each team is owned by a noted figure in the worlds of sport, entertainment and business and is led by a female and male pilot who compete in mixed genre races throughout the season. There are no ‘men’s races’ and ‘women’s races’, they are all on equal footing.
See Plugboats coverage of all races in the E1 Series 2025 Championship:
Jeddah Doha Dubrovnik Maggiore Monaco Lagos Miami
The goal of the series, aside from deciding ‘The Champions of the Water’, is to publicize and promote cutting-edge clean technologies while helping to protect and restore our planet’s coastal waters and ecosystems.
Two new teams, two new host cities for 2026There have been some changes to the schedule since last year. The 2025 races were held in Jeddah, Doha (Qatar), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Lago Maggiore (Italy), Monaco, Lagos (Nigeria) and Miami (USA). Doha will not be in this year’s schedule, but the season has nevertheless been expanded to 9 races with new stops in the Bahamas in October and a to-be-determined site in September. The Lago Maggiori race has been switched over to nearby Lake Como, where the Italian leg of the E1 was held the first year.
As for the teams, there are now nine. Carrying over from last year are (in order of finish): Team Brady, owned by former NFL quarterback Tom Brady; Team Rafa, owned by tennis legend Rafael Nadal; Indian cricketer Virat Kohli is owner of Team Blue Rising; DJ / Producer Steve Team AlUlA is championed by the NBA’s Lebron James; Team Drogba is owned by Ivory Coast footballer Didier Drogba; and Team Miami by multi-Grammy winner Marc Anthony.
Entrepreneur Marcel Claure’s Team Brazil finished 6th last year, but decided to opt out of the third season, with the new Sierra Racing Team taking its place.
Sierra is majority-owned by Sierra Enterprises, a Turkish-American concern that brings aerospace innovation and space technology expertise to the Series. The team livery draws inspiration from Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane that is designed to transport cargo to low-Earth orbit and back, using runway landings on return.
Rounding out the number of teams to ten is Team Monaco, where the the first two seasons of the E1 Series have been an exciting addition to the principality’s famed schedule of on-water and on-street races.
Some new pilots, some switching teamsAlong with the team changes came some pilot juggling. Team Brazil’s female pilot Ieva Millere-Hagin went to Team Drogba and male pilot Timmy Hansen went to Team Miami. Erik Stark went from Team Miami to Sierra, with Catie Munnings coming over from Team AlUla.
Continuing the musical cockpits, Team Drogba gave up the youngest pilot in the loop – nineteen year old Oban Duncan – to Team Monaco. She is joined there by ten time World Kite Surfing Champion Maxime Nocher who will see if he can continue his success with electric speedboating.
Other new pilots are former car racer Nerea Martí on Team AlUla and Uruguayan Patricia Pita Gago, who came from the rally driving circuit, on Team Miami. To add a bit of symmetry, E1 pilot Sara Misir moved from Team Blue Rising to Team Aoki with Mashael AlObaidan returning the favour.
We will get to the Jeddah race, I promise, but first a word about the format and rules.
Electric Speedboat Series Rules and Strategies (Click to + expand or – close the rules) E1 SERIES: RULESChampionship: Ten teams race over 9 weekends, with points awarded for finishing place, along with some bonus points for specific achievements. The Champions of the Water are the team that accumulates most points by the end of the season.
Events: Each event is held over two days, usually a Friday and Saturday. Qualifying time trials and races are held on Day One. Day Two has Group Races which decide two of the finalists, the Race Off to determine the other four finalists, the Place Race, and two Finals races – so both the female and male co-pilots of each team help determine the outcome.
The Finals and Place Race dictate the Championship Points awarded for each weekend.
Points Awarded: Points are awarded for each placing every weekend with the Champion having the most points at the end of the season.
1st: 38 | 2nd: 30 | 3rd: 23 | 4th: 19 | 5th: 15 | 6th: 13 | 7th: 9 | 8th: 8 | 9th: 5 | 10th: 3.
Points are also awarded for the three fastest Qualifiers: Fastest: 3 | 2nd: 2 | 3rd: 1.
One bonus point is awarded for the fastest lap of the weekend.
Qualifying: There are four Qualifying Stages with teams knocked out to establish the pole positions for Saturday’s races.
Qualifying Stage 1: Time Trials in which all 10 teams participate, the results ranked by average of both pilots’ best laps. Bottom 2 teams eliminated. Qualifying Stage 2: Remaining 8 teams in two sessions (groups of 4). Individual timed runs in reverse order, 2 non-consecutive attempts per team. Bottom 2 teams eliminated. Qualifying Stage 3: Remaining 6 teams in two sessions (groups of 3). Same format as Q1. Bottom 2 eliminated. Qualifying Stage 4: Pole Shootout to determines initial Pole Positions on Race Day. Final 4 teams, single 20-minute session. Each completes 2 timed laps in inverted order. Points are awarded toward the Championship total: 3-2-1.Saturday Racing
Group Stages: teams divided based on Qualifying results:
Group A: 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th
Group B: 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 10th
The top team from each group advances directly to the Finals. The bottom team from each goes to the Place Race. The teams finishing 2-3-4 in each go to the Race Off.
Race Off: Six team single race (only one pilot from each team) with the top four finishers going to the Finals and the bottom two going to the Place Race.
Place Race: Two races, one with each team’s pilot, best averaged time. Determines places 7-10 and Championship points.
Finals: Two races, one with each team’s pilot, best averaged time. Determines places 1-6 and Championship points.
SOME GENERAL RULES:
Pilots
In every stage except the Group Races and the Race Off both the female and male pilot participate in separate races to determine the winning team of each stage, alternating races throughout the weekend.
In the Finals, the finishing order for the first race determines pole position for the second.
Laps
There is not just one lap length, but three: Short, ‘Normal’ and Long. The distances are tailored to the waters and layout of each location, but are somewhere between 900 m ( ≈ .5 Nm / .6 mi) and 1700 m ( to ≈ .91 Nm / 1.0 mi).
The Qualifying Stages are timed on one Normal lap. The Saturday Races are six laps – one of which must be a Long Lap and one of which must be a Short Lap. Penalties are usually an extra long lap within the six laps, which could add anywhere from 20 to 35 seconds to the overall race time.
Boosts
Then there are the boosts. Pilots are allowed to draw extra energy out of the battery – for bursts of speed up to 20 seconds. The catch is that the time it takes to prepare for another boost is twice as long as the boost itself. So, if a pilot takes a boost for 10 seconds they will have to wait for 20 seconds before they can take another. Between the lap lengths and the boosts, there is a LOT of strategy involved, and the pilots are in constant contact with ‘Mission Control’ back at the dock.
General Strategy
Aside from the boosting and lap strategies, the overriding goal is to find clean water. The RaceBirds travel fastest when they are flying above the water on their foils. The boats need to be balanced both across the beam and along the length for optimum performance and waves – either natural or from the other boats – makes it tougher to stay on foil. That not only slows the pilot down but also requires extra power to get back up out of the water and onto the foils.
The race in Jeddah
The Corniche Obdhur of Jeddah is a bustling waterfront promenade that stretches along the Red Sea coast, a must-visit for all visitors and popular with locals also as a centre for history, culture, entertainment and spectacular views.
It hosts both the Formula E electric auto racing circuit on the land side and E1 electric speedboat series on the adjacent waters. Those waters are some of the flattest and calmest on the E1 circuit and allow the RaceBird pilots to record some of their fastest times.
FridayQualifying
In Friday’s Qualifying sessions, Team Brady – which has been Champion for both of the first two seasons of the Series – posted the fastest time in all four Stages. Pilots Sam Coleman and Emma Kimiläinen recorded 1:05.48 in the Stage 1 Time Trials, 1:04.58 in Stage 2, 1:05.34 in Stage 3…then secured the Saturday Pole in the Stage 4 Shootout.
That was just 1.7 seconds ahead of Aoki Racing Team’s Sara Misir and Dani Clos, 2.9 seconds ahead of Rafa’s Cris Lazarraga and Tom Chiappe and 3.2 seconds faster than fourth place qualifier Westbrook Racing’s Sara Price and Lucas Ordóñez.
That set up Saturday’s Group Stages:
Group A: Brady, Westbrook, Sierra, Monaco, Miami.
Group B: Aoki, Rafa, Drogba, AlUla, Blue Rising.
Group Stage
The winds were light and the Red Sea waters calm on Saturday as Brady continued their winning ways, taking the top spot in Group A and moving to the Finals. New pilot Nerea Martí and partner Rusty Wyatt won Group B with one of the most impressive moments of the day, Wyatt grabbing the lead after a start at the outside position to book a place for Team AlUlA in the Finals. Last place finishers Miami (A) and Blue Rising (B) were relegated to the Place Race.
Race Off
The Race Off would decide the fate of the other six teams – Rafa, Miami, Aoki, Westbrook, Sierra, Drogba. The top four would be off to the Finals, bottom two to the Place Race.
Watch the Race Off on the E1 YouTube Channel
An exciting start had four teams nose to nose and foil to foil for the first couple of turns with contact being made on more than one occasion before the teams settled into their positions. The Sierra team, with Erik Stark piloting, led for the entire race but there was some jockeying behind.
With the differing strategies on when to take the long and short laps, it is sometimes difficult to tell during the heat of a race which team is in what exact position, but on this occasion Team Rafa reaped the benefits of saving their short lap to the end and moved from 5th spot to 2nd. Final results: Sierra, Rafa, Westbrook and Aoki go to the Finals, Drogba and Miami to the Place Race.
FinalsThe Finals in the E1 Series is made up of two races, allowing both pilots of a team to make their mark. The first race determines the pole positions for the second race.
Finals 1
The sexes of each race were evenly split. In Finals 1 the males were Sam Coleman for Team Brady, Dani Clos for Aoki and Tom Chiappe for Rafa. Nerea Martí took the helm for AlUlA, Sara Price piloted the Westwood RaceBird and Rianna O’Meara Hunt was in the cockpit for the newcomer Sierra team, filling in as reserve for the weekend after Catie Munnings injured her leg playing paddle tennis two weeks before Jeddah.
The race began with a slight bang even before the main event, as Sierra and Westbrook made contact during the run up to the starting, narrowly missing the Rafa RaceBird, which was able to capture an early lead through the first corner.
Unfortunately Rafa were penalized for a pre-race infraction, and the extra long lap penalty dictated the strategy of which lap length to take at what time not only for Rafa but for all the teams. On the second last lap Aoki was in the lead with three teams converging on the course behind them: Brady coming out of the normal lap loop, AlUlA on their short lap and Rafa finishing their first long lap. They merged on the main course behind Aoki Brady-AlUlA-Rafa, but the tennis legend’s team still had another long lap to complete. Aoki also had their long lap to go, and the question became whether they had enough of a lead to assure victory coming out of it.
In the end, Rafa’s Tom Chiappe clocked some of the fastest speeds in the race, but could not overcome the setback of the penalty lap and the pole positions going into Finals 2 would be Aoki (Sara Misir), Brady (Emma Kimiläinen), AlUlA (Rusty Wyatt), Sierra (Erik Stark), Rafa (Cris Lazaragga), and Westbrook (Lucas Ordóñez).
Watch the Jeddah Finals on the E1 Series YouTube Channel
Finals 2
In the second Finals, Will Smith’s Team Westbrook looked to have jumped out to a lead at the starting line, but it was still a long way to get from the outer lane to the inner section, where Aoki held onto their Pole Position. Aoki pilot Sara Mizir had to battle off some contact from Rafa’s Cris Lazaragga at turn one, but managed to hold on. Lazzaraga wasn’t done, though, as she and Emma Kimiläinen of Brady nudged each other later in the lap.
Throughout the rest of the race, different strategies on the long and short laps kept the lead from being obvious, but it was easy to spot that Aoki always had clear water in front of them and came in first, followed by Brady, AlUlA, Westbrook, Sierra and Rafa. With all of the changes over the past season, one thing remained the same. Team Aoki had won the Jeddah Season Opener in 2025 and they repeated for 2026.
“I’ll tell you one thing, I haven’t experienced that much contact in awhile” said Sara Mizir in the cockpit just after the finish. “Exhilarating, exciting – I call it ‘spicy’ – difficult to keep the speed up…but boy, first win to start the season. It feels good!”
The next race in the E1 season takes place April 26 and 27 on Lake Como, Italy.
E1 Series website E1 YouTube Channel
2026 E1 Championship StandingsAfter Race 1: Jeddah PLC TEAM OWNER FEMALE MALE PTS 1 Aoki Racing Team Steve Aoki Sara Misir Dani Clos 40 2 Team Brady Tom Brady Emma Kimiläinen Sam Coleman 33 3 Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James Nerea Martí Rusty Wyatt 24 4 Westbrook Racing Will Smith Sara Price Lucas Ordóñez 19 5 Sierra Racing Club TURKEY GUYS Catie Munnings Erik Stark 15 6 Team Rafa Rafael Nadal Marcelo Claure Cris Lazarraga Tom Chiappe 13 7 Team Miami powered by Magnus Marc Anthony Patricia Pita Gago Timmy Hansen 9 8 Team Blue Rising Virat Kohli Mashael AlObaidan John Peeters 8 9 Team Monaco Oban Duncan Maxime Nocher 5 10 Team Drogba Global Africa TURKEY GUYS Ieva Millere-Hagin Micah
Wilkinson 3
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