Tell us about your most recent race history, and how you were brought in to Formula E.
I've raced a long time now - 15 years in various championships, mainly in Europe. I climbed the ladder through Formula 3, GP2, F1 in 2010-2011, before that I was a test driver for Red Bull in 2007-2008, then moved on to sports cars. I've been at Le Mans for the last three years, I've been doing WEC and raced GT races, then got involved in Formula E for this season.
How did you get involved - was it your move, or did someone introduce you to the idea?
I've known Alejandro Agag for a long time through GP2. He called me to get involved to potentially be one of the test drivers, along with Lucas Di Grassi who was doing it at the time. I started chatting with him, and he asked if we could get an Indian company involved as a team owner. I said I'd try and find out. I got in touch with Mahindra, and things snowballed from there. I got them involved with the series, and it's nice to be an Indian team with an Indian driver, trying to do something like this on a global scale.
What is Mahindra's interest and benefit of being in Formula E?
Mahindra make electric cars that are starting to be sold around the world. For them, it's a real benefit in terms of real technology being developed. It's not just a branding exercise. Obviously there are the branding and marketing benefits they get, but there's a genuine race-to-road technology transfer program that they're looking at. That's very interesting for the manufacturer.
You're doing very well with media yourself - you have quite a few Twitter followers (121,000), you do a lot of commentary as well - how do you feel that Formula E is doing with media on their side? It seems Formula E is picking up a lot of the slack that Formula 1 leaves behind.
I think Formula E has done well to embrace the internet in terms of video content and being more open. There's a few things they can do better - for example, I don't know why the paddock is closed off to the public. I think we should allow the public in to the paddock like they do in World Series or WEC. Let the people come close and see. I think that's one of the big downsides, and upsides, of F1. F1 is great because of its exclusivity, but it's been created as a brand over 60 years. If you're new, and you're trying to entice new audiences and reach out to the public, I think we should open it up and give them more access.
What Formula E is doing in terms of going to new markets like Uruguay, Miami, Moscow, though Long Beach is different because of its long history. For me a big upside of Formula E is that we race in the middle of cities. It's great to have a good media engagement program online, social media, etc. but you kind of sell yourself just by being in the middle of a city. You're putting yourself in the shopping window. They've done very well to get that concept going.