Buenos Aires is known for many things: good steak, great red wine and (to us Brits, at least) glorious weather.

This weekend could be a little different, however, with the forecast looking far more English. Grey skies and rain, apparently. Putting a raincoat in the Current E suitcase for the trip to South America seemed wrong yet entirely necessary.

According to the weather people, thunderstorms could blight Buenos Aires tomorrow, setting the stage for what could be Formula E’s first ever wet race. Wet running has been conducted at Donington Park, and parts of qualifying for the first London race was damp, yet there has never been a race affected by the weather. This truly has been a series with the Midas touch when it comes to finding sunshine. Even Hong Kong in season one was sunny, and that place spends more time under a grey blanket of smog than a teenager spends under a…well, a blanket.

“The weather seems like we’re gonna have a bit of different weather than the usual in Formula E,” Nelson Piquet said in Buenos Aires on Friday. “For the first time we’re gonna have real rain. Hopefully! We don’t have much experience. We did a bit at Donington testing in the wet but it’s a bit of a different environment to street course like this. We did a little bit in London in qualifying. But still, I think if it really rains tomorrow, it’s going to be our first time with proper rain, altogether on a street course. I think it’s going to be fun.”

A wet race could throw up all sorts of intriguing possibilities. While the cars run all-weather tyres, they’re not designed to cope with a lot of water, and the surfaces Formula E races on could be particularly tricky in the wet. There’s very little in terms of safe, wide run-off areas, with concrete barriers usually being all too ready to greet a mistake. There are “typhoon tyres” for really, really wet days, but if the rain was that heavy, it’s far more likely the whole thing would just be red-flagged from the outset.

Piquet is particularly keen to see if the usual suspects feature at the front of the grid in the rain, or whether others will stand out.

“We’ll see if the cars that are quick in the dry are still going to have the same kind of advantage in the rain,” Piquet said. “I don’t know. I think it’s going to be a good challenge for different drivers to shine in the rain. There will be drivers taking more risks. But in general I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s good for all of us to have a different scenario. We’ve hardly had any rain in these three seasons we’re racing. I hope it really rains, really hard and we have a fun time at the track.”

Luke Smith