When characters like Yoshi or Luigi run over a red mushroom in Mario Kart, they’re rewarded with a short power boost of acceleration to gain positions. In its just-ended fifth season, Formula E borrowed from the Nintendo playbook and brought power boosts to real-life motorsports.

The all-electric racing league announced a literal power boost called Attack Mode ahead of the 2018-19 season, adding strategy to a racing series that has become so evenly matched it yielded eight different winners in the first eight races this past season. France’s Jean-Eric Vergne broke that trend when he picked up his second win of the season in Formula E’s ninth race at Monaco. In July, he was crowned Formula E’s back-to-back season champ, securing three first-place wins during the 13-race circuit and placing in several others to acquire a total of 136 points, outpacing the runner-up’s 119 points.

Attack Mode can be thought of as a mini-pitstop in a league traditionally void of them, says Dilbagh Gill, the principal of Formula E’s Mahindra Team, which closed out Season 5 in sixth place (out of 11 teams). In every season prior to this one, teams had been required to swap out their cars halfway through the race because the batteries didn’t have the storage capacity to last an entire race. However, the pitstops were short-lived and void of strategy, with all teams essentially swapping out their cars around the same time.

This season, all teams were required to use new McLaren batteries with a peak power of 250 kW (last year it was 200 kW). The more powerful batteries are also capable of lasting the entire race, which forced Formula E to find another way to inject stoppages and strategy that might impact outcomes.

In order to activate Attack Mode, teams must navigate through digital gates that are offset from the track but still in view of the grandstands, similar to NASCAR’s pit road. While teams might initially lose time and positions as they drive through the “attack activation zone” (or miss it altogether if they don’t drive through all the required gates), they’re rewarded a 25 kW boost on their powertrain for an allotted period of time, which can be used to make up time and overtake positions. Once activated, a blue light across the top of the racing Formula E cars alerts fans that the car is in a higher-power mode.

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“This is a mini 1.5 second pitstop,” says Gill, who has been with the league since its inception. “You’re losing a bit of time, but you’re getting extra energy to attack or defend. It has spiced up the game a lot more.”

The required amount of these—and the length of time they afford— varies for each race. In Berlin, for example, teams were required to take three attack modes lasting 1:40 each. The Brooklyn circuit required just one lasting a minute. Oftentimes, teams aren’t given information about the details of these power boosts until just before the start, injecting varied types of strategy that must be determined in the heat of the moment. Teams that miss any of the required boosts are slapped with a financial penalty.

In another video game-like move, Formula E also enabled teams to unlock an extra 25 kW power boost based upon fan votes. The “Fan Boost” power surge is determined from spectator votes on Twitter in the days leading up to the race.

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All told, these features are meant to add strategy to a circuit that has seen its pace of innovation slow amid a plateau in car technology. Formula E teams compete exclusively on powertrain, which means that race outcomes have always been determined through a combination of tech development on the engine system and driver skill.

Every team has started to adopt their own strategy for executing the energy surges. Mahindra Team, for example, prefers to take Attack Mode as late into the race as possible so it can overtake positions closer to the finish line, though it considered taking it earlier in New York because the extreme summer heat can cause stress on the powertrain. Some teams prefer to take them twice in a row to avoid the lag time they face when driving off-track through the activation zone.

“We tend to use it at the end of race,” says Gill. “We’ve also done it at the same time: let’s say it’s a race where, when you go off line, you’re losing two seconds. You can do one after another and not lose those two seconds. Altogether, it opens up a lot more possibilities, and with regulation you can do one attack mode while you’re already in one, and the overlap opens up a lot of options.”

Gill says he was skeptical of the value of these mini-pitstops and power boosts heading into the season, but changed his view after seeing them at work during the circuit’s first race in Saudi Arabia.

“In Riyadh, we saw a car in front of us going for it, so we did it too,” says Gill. “The guy we were racing missed it twice; so we were able to shoot past him. It gave us a huge advantage.”

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“Attack mode makes it a little bit more exciting compared to some other series,” says Formula E driver Oliver Turvey. “They’ve been thinking out-of-the-box in terms of motorsport and I think that’s attracted new fans to the sport—a younger audience.”

Unlike its older brother, Formula 1, the e-Prix is unique in that it has been able to amass a large audience in key teenage and young adult demographics. In 2018, the league touted a 347% increase in the number of 13- to 17-year-old fans (Generation Z), and a 54% increase in engagement among the 18 to 24 age bracket (Millennials), in terms of engagement with its content over the season prior. At the time, Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag attributed the success to the league’s digital content-heavy strategy, with Formula E speaking “the same language” as its fans.

To be sure, the video game-like features and audience participation of these power boosts have added to the allure for some in these demographics, though others have criticized the gamification as being artificial and gimmicky. Either way, power boosts are a start to what will likely be added levels of strategy that further differentiates Formula E from more traditional combustion-engine circuits.

“They made it a fun race series,” says Turvey.

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