until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
Some decisions never lose their sting.
Sometime in the spring, Jaguar Racing chief James Barclay reflected on some of the drivers who had partnered Mitch Evans in the other Jaguar cockpit over the last four seasons.
He would have come to a rather obvious conclusion that now was the time to invest in a proven grandee Formula E driver. It wasn’t so much a choice, more a necessity.
Since Jaguar began its Formula E story back in Hong Kong in October of 2016 it has claimed 342 championship points. Evans has scored 265 of them, while the other 77 are spread among four others.
It was such a fundamental issue for Jaguar’s final standings in the teams’ championship over the last three seasons – sixth, seventh and seventh position finishes was the overwhelming evidence.
Barclay and his team acted, targeted Sam Bird, and swooped with a deal accelerated during the initial UK lockdown in late spring, early summer.
Since then, according to Barclay, Bird has been “contributing within hours and minutes of stepping on site.”
“It’s not until you work with somebody that you get to know what they really like” :: Sam Bird on Mitch Evans
“You’re not dealing with a rookie driver you’re kind of trying to bring up to speed straightaway, you’re into the value part of the equation straight away,” Barclay tells The Race.
“His experience and how he’s gone about racing in FE has been important to start to understand how together we will get the best out of each other, and straight away just seeing how motivated Sam is has been fantastic.”
It’s been billed as a dream team and the stats back that grand claim up.
Jaguar didn’t need overt skill and direction in technical matters so much, it really just needed a new hit of energy according to Barclay.
“We have with Mitch the driver who everyone has total confidence in and Sam coming in is exactly the same,” he says.
“But seeing his passion immediately for wanting to succeed is massively energising for the team.
“It’s having that experience that Sam brings and very much feels like we’re doubling efforts.
“Whereas particularly with rookie team-mates Mitch was having to do a lot of that for both drivers, but that’s what Sam is immediately coming in and contributing too.”
That practical deployment of his experience has taken place largely on the expansive windswept asphalt of Abingdon airfield.
This is the rather unglamorous but effective location often used by the Williams Formula 1 team – and Arrows too in the past – away from the glare of competitors.
Jaguar has invested in a modest permanent building at the Oxfordshire airbase where it now conducts the majority of its testing.
In recent seasons it had de-camped to Calafat in Spain, or used the Blyton proving ground in Lincolnshire, but now it has a site within 20-minutes of its base in Grove.
“If there are any issues, it can be back at base within literally 20 minutes, and we can resolve a situation, whereas if you go abroad, that might not be the case,” Bird tells The Race.
“So having something so close by has certainly been extremely useful.”
“They have answers to things that my previous team simply didn’t have answers to, because they didn’t have the [testing] time with their car” :: Sam Bird
For Bird it is where his new chapter started, and the mere fact that he has been a centrepiece of his first development test programme with a team since the summer of 2017 should not be underestimated.
At Envision Virgin, he had to make do with a few crumbs tossed from the Audi testing allocation table, but now he is back in one of his favoured habitats: the solitary test track.
“The team’s understanding of everything seems to be that much better,” says Bird.
“They have answers to things that my previous team simply didn’t have answers to, because they didn’t have the [testing] time with their car.
“So that is very exciting for me to get to be able to get answers and get answers quickly, and to make changes and understand those changes to react. That’s been pretty big for me.”
Like with Lucas di Grassi at Audi and Sebastien Buemi at e.dams in both its Renault and Nissan incarnations, Jaguar was under Evans’ spell in what through a variety of circumstances was essentially a one horse team from early 2019 onwards.
That has now changed, yet Bird is gently opening the door ajar rather than kicking it in.
“It’s not until you work with somebody that you get to know what they really like,” Bird says of his new team-mate and 2013 GP2 (pictured above) sparring partner.
“So far, I’ve been super impressed. His understanding of the vehicle underneath him is superb.
“His feedback is great, very technical, rapid. So I think that’s why he wins races and gets podiums and why he brings the spoils for Jaguar.”
Jaguar will be hoping that those spoils will be shared across both sides of the garage in 2021 so it can emerge from its often false midfield standing to become an authentic title contender.
