The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship is about to begin a season that Envision Virgin Racing managing director Sylvain Filippi has described as “super competitive” and one in which the field was be “even tighter”.
In a series where the best policy is to not make any predictions, Filippi is likely to be spot on with his broad but perceptive prophecy.
While there wasn’t a lot that might be described as anomalous around Antonio Felix da Costa’s gap at the head of the points table last season, part of it was undoubtedly amplified by the fact that the final half of the season was all at the same venue – Tempelhof, Berlin.
Who knows what would have happened had the calendar have played out as it should have? But the fact remains that DS Techeetah did the best job, deserved its titles and as a consequence starts the season as de facto favourite to continue a streak that da Costa made a hat-trick after Jean-Eric Vergne’s previous successes.
While the wins are likely to be spread out between the majority of the teams much in the way they were in the first Gen2 season of 2018/19, the smart money is on a trio of challengers taking on DS over the full duration of the 2021 season.
Nissan e.dams
This team knows how to win titles and along with DS Techeetah its haul is currently way ahead of the rest at four (three teams’ titles and Sebastien Buemi’s 2015/16 drivers’ crown).
The team has propulsive talent throughout its ranks and had it been able to keep its innovative twin-MGU system for the 2019/20 season there are few that doubt it would have added to its trophy cabinet substantially.
Last season Buemi, on paper at least, had his worst net qualifying over the entire season with an average of 7.5. Ironically though, this was still the best of all the drivers that participated in every round.
And it was skewed by the penultimate round in Berlin’s last-across-the-line qualifying debacle when Nissan joined Audi and DS Techeetah in the embarrassment stakes.
That apart, Nissan was super strong and actually dominated that race with Oliver Rowland, who was absolutely peerless from dawn until dusk that day.
It has worked in furthering the current Nissan IM02 concurrently with its new powertrain, which will debut at the Rome E-Prix in April.
The team has also bolstered its engineering ranks with the recruitment of Cyril Jourdan from Toyota’s factory motorsport programme.
He will work alongside the revered Vincent Gaillardot, who was one of the key driving forces behind both Renault e.dams’ successes and the notorious Nissan IM01.
Buemi is as hungry as ever, while Rowland appeared to iron out some pugnacious traits over his first season and a half.
They work well together. As Rowland told The Race late last year, they’ve formed a kind of symbiosis.
“I’ve probably never had as good a relationship with any team-mate in the past,” he said of Buemi.
“I think two of him would be negative and two of me would be negative [for a team].”
That might be bad news for the opposition if Nissan e.dams, as expected, comes in harder and faster in 2021.
Mercedes
Along with Nissan e.dams, Mercedes became the closest true challenger to DS Techeetah by the end of last season.
Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries had threatened a victory tilt on occasions, notably with Vandoorne in Ad Diriyah and de Vries in Mexico City, but it wasn’t to be on those occasions.
By the final race of the season all the stars became aligned and the silly or freak incidents which had interrupted its progress in Mercedes’ first proper season were sidestepped.
Should these continue to be hurdled and mystery races such as Vandoorne’s missing-in-action Marrakesh disaster be avoided then the indications are that the Silver Arrows can hit some bullseyes this season.
The two drivers are very closely matched. De Vries was the clear stand-out rookie last term and he had the qualifying advantage over his more experienced team-mate by a mere 0.03s!
The pair raced sensibly at the Berlin finale but there is a healthy rivalry there, which Mercedes appears to have a lid on.
The recruitment of respected former Benetton, Lotus and Renault technical leader Nick Chester last summer was a big move, showing the deep ambition for the team to achieve new milestones as quickly as possible.
DS Techeetah won a title in its second season and it doesn’t take too much of a visionary to see that with all the capabilities at its disposal, a more robust Mercedes-Benz EQ is in a decent position to possibly follow suit.
BMW i Andretti
The eclectic mix of Bavarian, British and American management genealogy within this team seems a perfect correlation for its infamous hot and cold performances over the last two seasons.
On its day it can be untouchable and the blue-and-white cars are rightly acknowledged as among the very best all-round propositions. This has been rumoured to be possible because BMW may have a longitudinal set-up for its powertrain cluster.
All it says publicly on the matter is that it has “optimised use of the constructed space in the vehicle thanks to new knowledge about functional integration and packaging of the drivetrain, including auxiliary units”.
History tells us that the team’s off days can be stinkers. Witness the infamous Alexander Sims/da Costa disaster in January 2019 when a collision threw away a Marrakesh 1-2, Gunther’s anonymous Mexico City race last February, some of the German’s carbon crunching Berlin escapades or indeed any of Sims’ insipid Berlin races too.
“We concluded season six [2019/20] with a taste of unfinished business for the BMW i Andretti Motorsport team, finishing with three wins but only in fifth place in the championship,” says team principal Roger Griffiths.
“The sights are set much higher though for the first season of the new world championship.”
That may be stating the plain and obvious but Griffiths knows that with some more poise and regularity BMW has the constituent parts to put a title challenge together.
Guenther has the internal poise to absorb pressure like a zen master. When he gets near the front he usually wins, it’s just in mid-pack where the patience needs to be improved.
He was super quick in Diriyah 15 months ago and but for a penalty could easily have taken a win. With his multi-year BMW deal in Formula E cut short by its impending exit, Guenther is extra motivated to show he can build upon just sporadic wins.
New partner Jake Dennis could turn into an inspired choice and become a good foil to his very brief 2016 F3 team-mate in a similar way to how Buemi and Rowland function.
There is a reason why he was chosen ahead of some very strong former DTM rivals, and despite what some might say it wasn’t anything to do with politics or BMW’s odd departure from its Formula E programme.
That exit as a surprise to Andretti itself. It had mere hours to digest the news and while this shouldn’t have any adverse reaction in terms of operational and technical outlook, it will serve as an explicit motivation for a final attempt for the partnership to create a title winning legacy.
