Nico Mueller is three and half years older than his Andretti Formula E team-mate Jake Dennis and has more overall racing experience.
Yet when it comes down to arriving at perhaps one of the championship's most single-driver-focused set-ups, then it's naturally Mueller who has had to adapt and learn.
It is early days for Formula E's tallest-ever driver pairing but, despite an erratic start in Sao Paulo, Mueller has fitted into the Andretti way of working. The question might be though, is it Dennis's way of working?
Mexico City was much stronger for Mueller as he raced into an early fourth place via an early and aggressive attack mode strategy. And although it petered out a little in the second half of the E-Prix, partly due to a power cut that inadvertently meant he was swiped by Mitch Evans, Mueller's first Andretti points were gained for a ninth-place finish, and an initial milestone was ticked off.
On the basis of that it's difficult to work out if Mueller can truly push Dennis, who has comfortably outqualified Mueller at the opening two races of the 2024-25 season. While that isn't a massive concern at present, Mueller will be keen to at least make it into the duels for the first time for Andretti in Jeddah next month.
That will come because the focused Swiss does indeed seem a natural fit at Andretti. After three and a half seasons with one erratic team (Dragon/Penske Racing in 2019-21) and another that was strong but had a big limiting technical weight on its shoulders (Abt in 2023-24) he is now in a more settled environment.
Mueller is a deep thinker when it comes to his racing and how he goes about it. Over the last two or three seasons he has been keenly aware that he is entering his most productive and high-earning years. That's why he jumped at the opportunity to sign on as a Porsche factory driver, forsaking the possibility of a dual programme in the World Endurance Championship in doing so.
But clarity and a clearly defined objective, which he never really had beyond his own personal achievements, is now part of the plan in a way it was not in his three and a half seasons prior to joining Andretti.
"You clearly noticed that there is, on many levels, lots of consistency in the team, which I think is a good thing," Mueller tells The Race.
"You could feel that lots of the people were here for quite some time, not lots of changes in personnel on all fronts, engineering, mechanics, management.
"So, that I think was good. And Jake is one of those very long-lasting constants, as you would call it."
Andretti has been all about Dennis since he was plucked from relative single-seater obscurity in 2020. Of the seven E-Prix wins Andretti has, Dennis has taken six of them. Of the 728 points scored by Andretti since he joined, Dennis has captured 568 of them.
It's not hard to see how the 2023 champion has defined the team in his time there.
But does that mean it's his team? Logically no, but perhaps spiritually yes.
"I think it automatically becomes geared up around Jake. I don't know if that's the words, but I think automatically, when you're working together as a unit for quite a long time then for him it's four or five seasons, so automatically, yes, you could call it that way," says Mueller.
"It becomes a bit of machinery that just functions together because you've done that for such a long time, without pushing for it to be that way."
But Mueller also says that he "doesn't see it as a negative at all" and that Dennis is "obviously one of the very best in this paddock and he has done extremely well together with Andretti".
"From the very first moment he's arrived in this championship, he's probably one of the very best benchmarks you can have."
Dennis vs Andretti team-mates
2021
Dennis: 91 points (3rd)
Max Guenther: 66 points (16th)
2022
Dennis: 126 points (6th)
Oliver Askew: 24 points (16th)
2023
Dennis: 229 points (1st)
Andre Lotterer: 23 points (18th)
2024
Dennis: 122 points (7th)
Norman Nato: 47 points (15th)
2024-25*
Dennis: 13 points (6th)
Mueller: 2 points (15th)
*after two rounds
Mueller is also a pragmatic driver, who knows when to learn and when to hustle, when to talk and when to listen. After Maximilian Guenther, Oliver Askew, Andre Lotterer and Norman Nato, that seems like a good blend of qualities to have alongside Dennis.
Ultimately though the stopwatch and the points will be the judge of that.
"Coming into a team like Andretti with him next to you, I think there's a lot of stuff I can learn from him," adds Mueller.
"You can see that a lot of it is in the very small details, and in the communication with his crew and stuff.
"Obviously, they know each other inside out and they do a very good job at that. It's good to experience that firsthand and it allows me to take a step forward as well and keep growing as a Formula E driver."
