Porsche will defend its first ever Formula E title in different colours in the forthcoming season - but its new Gen3Evo car is very much an evolution of the successful original Gen3 model.
Most manufacturers are following suit with refined and upgraded powertrains in the new campaign while also starting work on their Gen4 packages for what will be Formula E’s biggest ever leap in 2026.
The lead times and organisation needed for the Gen4 project have been widened by the FIA and the spec part suppliers, meaning that manufacturers have had to stretch their own resources in accordance with the stringent cost caps that have been in place since 2022.
The newly homologated Porsche 99X Electric will initially look unfamiliar in purple and green hues, a nod to the ambitious and successful all-electric Taycan projects, but below the surface there will be further developed parts rather than all new outright designs for the final two seasons of the Gen3 era.
“Yes, we have a complete new homologation of the powertrain but we are already looking at the Gen4 concept,” said Porsche’s director of factory motorsport in Formula E Florian Modlinger.
“This means you need to exactly allocate your resources to topics where you think you gain the most performance. Looking at our powertrain, we looked really at every specific area and tried to improve every little specific area as an evolution of last year's powertrain.
“This means there are developments in the car, in the complete powertrain, around the powertrain, where we think we still had potential, and this we really consequently did and improved all the details from last year's homologation.”
Porsche had a powerful package last season but it was one that needed honing carefully, especially in qualifying where Pascal Wehrlein was much improved last season compared to his more erratic 2023 campaign.
Across the garage Antonio Felix da Costa, after a well-publicised awful start in Mexico and Diriyah, also improved and went on a streak of success which at least in part probably saved him from being replaced by Nico Mueller - who is still hotly tipped to eventually do just that next August once the 2024-25 season ends.
Wehrlein’s form and clarity of judgement in his qualifying and racing reaped title dividends and Porsche only really failed to also secure the teams title because of da Costa’s Misano disqualification for running the wrong throttle spring and also a messy final race in London where he inadvertently took out friend and rival Nick Cassidy.
Porsche: Tyre whisperer again?
The way Porsche understood the quirky Hankook tyres last season was one of the secrets behind Wehrlein’s title-winning level of consistency.
As it had been with the original Gen3 car, Porsche was one of the first to hit the track with the Gen3Evo product - which will run on tyres that have several key changes to the 2024 season rubber. Its revised car first hit the track in April.
Some material has been removed from the sidewall of the Hankooks for the new season, but a change in the actual compound is the big difference. There were actually two compounds in the previous tyre, a softer one on the inside half of the tyre and a stiffer compound on the outside. The Gen3 Evo product is now just one compound, which will be racier but more liable to degrade more.
Porsche being especially knowledgeable about the Hankooks was part skill and part experience. Modlinger and other engineers had plenty of knowhow on precisely where Hankook came from in construction and compound terms through years of working with their products in the DTM with Audi.
It is thought Wehrlein was especially nuanced in how he was able to understand the tyre windows better than da Costa, who while also having experience with Hankooks from the DTM struggled at times to keep the rubber on the right side of the best operating cycle.
Porsche also had a secret weapon in the shape of Matteo Marini, its vehicle dynamic and tyre engineering guru. Although he had not worked in the DTM, Marini’s experience with Dallara and nine years with Porsche was invaluable.
His forensic input was rewarded with a trip to the podium when da Costa won at Shanghai, a track which was especially sensitive to the Hankooks last season.
Morini left the team in August for a new role atFerrari but his replacement, who comes from within Porsche, worked alongside him for the majority of last season to ensure a seamless transition.
“The key will be to have the correct tyre state in the correct laps where you need peak performance, and this means the front tyre with the rear tyre, not only one axle in the perfect state,” reckons Modlinger.
“We will have degradation, thermal degradation and you will need to see on which tracks which axle will suffer more, and this we have counteracted with the correct measures.”
The higher peak performance of the Gen3Evo will create “a complex system around the tyre” according to Modlinger, and it will be one “where you will also see in free practice that you will save mileage”.
“The driver who is best prepared and needs the least runs in free practice will benefit in qualifying the most,” he explained. “That is because he has the freshest tyres, and you will see a lot of different action compared to last year.”
That’s an intriguing new twist for Formula E, maybe equally as fascinating as the FIA’s recent announcement that there will be a tyre parc ferme at races.
This will be in accordance with notified times from the governing body on when registered tyres are available for teams and when they are not.
According to the new regulation "45 minutes before the first session of each day of competition the tyre parc ferme is open and competitors are allowed to collect the tyres. All tyres will be provided to the competitor by a scrutineer".
Then “either 20 minutes after the end of the last session of the day or 20 minutes after the race parc fermee opens, all tyres must be delivered by the competitor to the tyre parc ferme. This is not applicable for the last race of a competition”.
Those stipulations sound simple to manage but little is known so far about the precise locations and conditions of the area in which the tyres are to be kept, and naturally it will differ from location to location.
“It must be guaranteed that the tyres in the common area, must have the temperatures, the humidity, everything exactly the same,” said Modlinger.
“Also, that you do not have a position which is worse than another position. This must be guaranteed, and that there's no access from other people or other teams to your tyres.
“The main difference, I think, you will make between the sessions, how you treat your tyres in the in laps and out laps, how you treat them between the sessions, where you store them, which tyre sets you run in, which run in free practice.
“This will be key as we had only some test days, the others also. I am sure you will see that different teams will come up with different approaches. Then after the first four or five events, we will converge to a similar approach.”
The Kiro factor
Porsche craves the teams’ title and that will be a major target this season when it again starts as one of the favourites
It will also start with strength in numbers as now there will be six of Stuttgart’s finest electric racers on the starting grid.
It remains to be seen if there will be four Porsche factory drivers ready to race too, as The Race revealed earlier this week that plans are in motion to test reserve driver David Beckmann at new customer Kiro to add to Mueller at Andretti, and of course the two works drivers in da Costa and champion Wehrlein.
Although Kiro will take time to get up to speed with its new Porsche package, it could become a real factor in taking points away from its supplier’s rivals in the second phase of the season.
“The powertrains are already integrated but it was a short amount of time from London [the 2024 season finale] to make this happen, but the cars are ready,” said Modlinger, who attended a shakedown test of the Kiro Porsche at Weissach last week.
“They've done their rollout and prepared for Valencia. Clearly we are at the stage where we were two years ago with Andretti, so we need to get to know them better and they need to get to know us, how we work and so on.
“The first time we will go together on track will be Valencia, and then let's see how the cooperation builds up.”
Should that cooperation include Beckmann, which frankly looks very likely at this stage, then a third method for making sure its points chances are maximised might just be the least predictable masterstroke of recent seasons by Porsche.
