> driving around in a circle in last-century technology

As a criticism I think this lacks perspective. Presumably you want them to be driving electric cars in a circle. Electric cars are 19th century technology:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-02/the-history-birth-dea...

Formula E is good. It's improving year by year and the Gen2 car is a clear improvement over the Gen1 car. You can watch past races on their YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/FIAFormulaE

But let's not kid ourselves. Formula E is not yet at the level of Formula 1.