What was initially a shock pre-season testing shot with the renamed Kiro team for David Beckmann will meet a (now) far less surprising resolution: the Porsche driver will race for Porsche's new customer in the 2024-25 Formula E season.
Does that make Kiro simply a patsy or puppet team to Porsche now?
The reality is much more complex than any such sweeping statement would suggest. It is born from a deeper-rooted plan that Porsche has in both its quest to win the first official Formula E manufacturers' crown next year and perhaps even also the future landscape of Gen4 Formula E racing from 2026 onward.
That's because when the lights go out in Sao Paulo next month for the start of the 2024-25 season Porsche will be the first manufacturer supplying two customer teams in Formula E. And should Formula E's Gen4 manufacturer commitment stay as it is at four - Jaguar, Nissan and Lola in addition to Porsche - then each will have to follow the Porsche trend of supplying two teams from the end of 2026 onwards.
That would mean Porsche has two seasons' advantage on its direct opposition in having six cars on the grid. Significant? Yes, in terms of how it manages its support and what it asks of its customers.
It's already asked a big question of Kiro in taking on Beckmann. And while that makes a lot of sense from the standpoint of a driver who knows the car intimately and is also clearly hungry to end two seasons of relative inactivity, will it mean that Kiro, until this year a manufacturer entity in its own right, has much autonomy for its new owner to really understand and grow from?
Plenty of questions to dig into. Not least because several members of Porsche's key management staff are recognised 'DTM heads': fond of a model whereby each manufacturer has multiple teams to impose orders on, with the overall goal of assisting that brand's anointed title contender.
That model wasn't to everyone's taste (and it's worth noting Porsche wasn't in DTM at the time, though its sister brand Audi was) but it certainly was for manufacturers involved on many occasions, when intra-team chess pieces moved almost quicker than the human eye could track.
While Kiro kept a low-profile at the recent Jarama test, its manufacturer mothership and its significant other half was happy to talk about a fascinating juncture in Formula E's development.
Porsche's view
"We will maximise everything to get the most out of it as a package. That means us with them [Kiro] together, that is clear."
Florian Modlinger is seldom, if ever, nuanced. He's clear as a bell, sometimes brutally so. Ask Antonio Felix da Costa!
He's the kind of guy you never enquire about what he really means. Ask a straight question, you get a straight answer.
"It’s a great opportunity for both of us but clearly first they [Kiro] have to ramp up and then we need to get to know each other as we did with Andretti," Modlinger tells The Race.
"Let's see where they are, where we are and what could be the benefits."
Beckmann was thrust at Kiro at an early stage. Sergio Sette Camara's nose was put out of joint, not for the first time. And actually, in light of a 2024 season in which he outqualified and outscored team-mate Dan Ticktum, Sette Camara (pictured below) can feel more than a little hard done by.
But Beckmann it is who will get back on the single-seater horse after it almost, but not quite, bucked him off altogether in 2023.
"He has a lot of experience with our simulator and with our systems. He got the chance to test which I think is very good for him and he now needs to grab his chance," Modlinger says of Beckmann.
"It's good for him but it's up to him [to impress], it's not our influence or our decision, it's a team decision and how he performs."
Beckmann performed well in Jarama. But going up against Ticktum consistently, in a car that should be capable of podiums this season, will be an altogether more daunting task.
And what of that DTM analogy of acquiring, dividing and conquering?
"I do not know what you speak about with DTM," Modlinger says with a knowing smile, indulging in a rare bit of feigned naivety.
When Beckmann looked like an F1 prospect
Jack Benyon
David Beckmann's 2018 was absolutely insane. It might even have put him on a path to Formula 1 had it played out differently.
Having started that GP3 campaign with the struggling Jenzer team, a mid-season switch to Trident produced three wins and a points per race average that, if extrapolated out over the whole season, would have won him the championship. Instead, that title went to the late Anthoine Hubert, who beat team-mate Nikita Mazepin to the crown.
Had Beckmann won, perhaps he could have jumped straight to Formula 2 like his rivals and had a chance to maintain that trajectory, but a poor follow-up season in GP3's successor, FIA Formula 3, put the brakes on that momentum. He was 14th with ART and well beaten in the team-mate stakes by Christian Lundgaard.
He made it to F2 in 2021 but split with Charouz halfway through the season, and during a further spell there the following year plus stints at Campos then Van Amersfoort either side of that none of those teams looked like champions - and Beckmann no longer did either.
What about Andretti?
It's been clear over the past two seasons in which Porsche has supplied Andretti that their marriage was one that needed to be worked at. In that sense, it's definitely higher on the relationship maintenance side than that of Jaguar and Envision, although that pairing did have its matrimonial moments of discord last season too.
Beyond the frayed nature of London 2023, when Michael Andretti created one of the defining images of the season by angrily confronting Porsche board members when Pascal Wehrlein and Jake Dennis had their almost daily combative congress, Porsche and Andretti have learned to understand each other.
Particularly after Dennis took the title in 2023, Porsche's mind more and more turned to wanting a more pliable customer which it could mould into an honest and more supple back-up. It tried several times but Andretti was not often for turning.
Around the same time, last summer, the prospect of having just that sort of additional customer team emerged as the ERT team got traction with US investors, Forest Road and Ares Management. A two-pronged manufacturer-customer approach had never happened before in Formula E but the more Porsche looked at it, the more it made sense.
Firstly, it was financially attractive to offload its two-time drivers' title-winning, Gen3-homologated Porsche 99X Electric. Then, with the manufacturers' world championship becoming official for 2025, the competitive instincts kicked in.
The last time Porsche took a manufacturers' crown of any description in a top class was in 2017 in the World Endurance Championship. As one of motorsport's most prestigious manufacturers, Porsche thirsts after such achievements.
From Andretti's standpoint, at least privately, the Kiro news would have been met with more than a bit of frigidity. It doesn't lose much but neither does it gain and will be seen as a distraction for its mothership.
When The Race asked team principal Roger Griffiths whether the Kiro deal will affect Andretti, he said: "I don't think so, as I think Porsche wouldn't have taken it on if they had a fear of any kind of impact to us.
"We would probably be able to operate independently of each other. We've yet to see how it's going to play out over a race weekend and what that really means. It's a different relationship between Porsche and ourselves than between Porsche and Kiro."
That is because as the first served, Andretti is the official Porsche customer team. What is stated contractually is not known precisely but Andretti certainly seems outwardly comfortable with a situation in which a previous backmarker team is running the same car it took Dennis to the title with in 2023 and which will still be quick enough to mix it at the front two seasons on.
Griffiths has been around the block enough to know that manufacturers always do what's best for themselves. He was on the other side of the revolving door with Honda for almost a decade when it was supplying customers in IndyCar and the American Le Mans Series. He knows how it works and perhaps that has been a significant part of the success, however fraught at times, of the Porsche-Andretti relationship.
But he can also easily spot warning signs too. "We've also seen some Porsche influence come in with Simona [de Silvestro] in the car for Friday afternoon [at Jarama] and David [Beckmann] in the car for the whole of this week. Porsche is using it to try and get more information.
"But fair play, I'd be doing the same thing, honestly."
