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In pictures: The car causing a fuss at Lloyd’s of London today
Anyone wondering what the besuited crowd around the bottom of the Lloyd's building were looking at this afternoon can wonder no more, it was a very fast car – a Formula E car to be precise.
Why is it outside the Lloyd’s Building? Amlin, the Lloyd’s-based reinsurance company, is to sponsor and work closely with a Formula E team, including driver Katherine Legge (the only female driver in the championship).
Formula E is like your bog standard Formula One except the cars are electric rather than gas guzzling. They also race internationally on city-centre streets rather than out-of-town circuits – and yes, we’ll have hosting a City-centre road race in London next year (actual route TBC).
“We first looked into Formula E because our rugby sponsorship was coming to an end and we were looking for something more global,” Adrian Britten, director of communications at Amlin told us.
“It’s an innovative new sport and it fits in nicely with our sustainability drive. It’s also very inclusive, it’s not very often you get to see a cars doing 150mph on the same streets you take your kids to school on.”
Indeed.
Katherine Legge poses in her car outside Lloyd's of London (Source: Amlin)
Katherine grabbed the red-eye from the states to be at the launch today but she doesn’t necessarily get what the fuss is about her being a woman. “I’ve always been the only female driver so it’s quite normal to me,” she told us.
“When you put the helmet on no-one can tell and the car certainly doesn’t know you’re any different.” And rightly so.
An Amlin employee shows some passers by how the steering works (Source: Amlin)
The Amlin Formula E car up close and personal (Source: Gabriella Griffith/City AM)