SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF

Racing is baked into Cupra's name and brand image, so doing it is a given. But why in Extreme E?

- James Attwood

Plenty of car firms have a rich motorsport heritage, but few can accurately claim that it's baked right into their name like Cupra can. It's hidden in plain sight: Cup Racing.

What was once a badge used for Seat's motorsport efforts and hot road cars is today a stand-alone brand with a broader, more rounded focus, but it still has competition at its heart.

“Motorsport is still very important for us," says marketing chief Thibaud Vincent-Genod. “It's in our DNA, SO it's natural for us to look where we can be involved." In recent years, its focus has been on touring cars with the TCR-spec Cupra Leon, expanding into the electric Pure ETCR series in 2021.

But Cupra took a bold leap last year, becoming the first manufacturer to sign up for the new Extreme E category, with a team run by Abt, the German tuning firm that has also run Audi's title-winning DTM and Formula E works efforts.

That said, walk through the various tents assembled on an otherwise innocuous patch of Saudi Arabian desert that forms the Extreme E paddock for the 2022 season opener and Abt Cupra doesn't exactly stand out as one of just two manufacturer-backed teams.

You won't find any of the trappings normally associated with a major manufacturer's motorsport project: the service tent is the same size as every other, there's a small handful of mechanics instead of a vast phalanx and there isn't a vast hospitality unit to entertain hundreds of vaguely interested VIPs. The only real clue is the Cupra Born parked in the sand behind the tent.