Going into the 2021 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship season, the heyday of what’s now known as Dragon Penske Autosport was a distant memory.
A race winner and regular frontrunner with Jerome d’Ambrosio in FE’s early days, Dragon’s most notable contribution to the 2019/20 season had been the sudden ejection of its ex-Formula 1 driver signing Brendon Hartley on the eve of the Berlin races.
“I almost thought something felt wrong because I said ‘how are we all of a sudden top five? The others must be hiding something'” :: Sergio Sette Camara
But in Diriyah, Dragon driver Sergio Sette Camara was pleasantly surprised to be racing in the “same ballpark” as the opposition.
Sette Camara’s fourth place in race two was Dragon’s best race result since d’Ambrosio’s Zurich podium in June 2018 (pictured below).
In the Saturday race, Sette Camara had started on the front row, and ran third in the opening phase.
The 22 points that he and team-mate Nico Mueller accumulated in Saudi Arabia are just three shy of the total amount the team scored across the first two seasons of the Gen2 rules combined. And it’s a lot more than its two points from the entire 2019/20 campaign.
The Race revealed last month that Dragon Penske Autosport had made some key hires after that disastrous season.
Former Porsche North America man Gary Davies has come on board as chief engineer, augmented by new race engineers Jamie Gomeche and Connor Summerville.
Software developments over the off-season and the first signs of Davies’ changes to the team’s organisation are already paying off.
Though some of the usual Formula E frontrunners had messy Diriyah weeks and started out of position, Dragon’s strong positions weren’t just inherited.
But Sette Camara admitted he hadn’t expected to see progress so quickly, especially as Dragon is among the handful of teams starting 2021 with an old powertrain before the new one arrives in ‘homologation slot two’.
“It was a very nice surprise to be honest,” Sette Camara told The Race. “What surpassed my expectations was already in day one when we arrived and we were up there in FP1 and FP2.
“I could see each time that meant I had the pace for the top five.
“I almost thought something felt wrong because I said ‘how are we all of a sudden top five? The others must be hiding something or waiting for qualifying’.
“Compared to Berlin when I did a really good lap but was ninth, here I was in superpole and chasing pole.
“That was a really nice feeling and, yes, it shocked me.
“We were that quick in performance runs, probably a consequence of the work input of the new people in the team already showing, even without the new car.”
Sette Camara was sixth when the red flag was brought out for Alex Lynn’s spectacular accident but was elevated to fourth after Jean-Eric Vergne and Nick Cassidy were handed post-race penalties. Team-mate Mueller made it two Dragons in the top five.
Those positions might have been in jeopardy had the race run its planned duration, as the DPA cars were around 2% down on energy compared to their rivals. But a double points finish was very much on the cards regardless.
That result followed a controversial Friday race in which Sette Camara started from 19th on the grid after what quickly became an infamous qualifying incident.
But the 22-year-old’s 20th place finish in race one gave him a fresh opportunity in the better track conditions that qualifying group four on Saturday allowed.
“I took that opportunity and if you don’t do it on the first time, you have more pressure on the second time,” said Sette Camara.
“It would be just much easier if we had done the proper job on day one, and got no pressure for day two. But instead, I did a mistake, and I had to try to recover.
“I think we surprised not only ourselves, but also a big part of the people watching and also other teams because we qualified on the front row.
“That was a big, big step forward compared to our most recent performances.”
Team principal Jay Penske did not attend the Diriyah races in person, although he was understood to have flown to Riyadh during the week. The team did not respond to The Race’s request for information on why Penske was not present at the track.
