Before 2021, Formula E teams didn’t have to consider what their form might be like on permanent tracks versus street courses.
But the calendar salvaging forced by the pandemic means the championship’s started racing at more traditional motorsport venues – albeit with courses adjusted to bring them closer to FE-spec.
Puebla this weekend is the second such venue on the schedule, and the title-chasing Jaguar team heads there facing a question mark.
Its disastrous non-score weekend at the last permanent circuit it visited in April at Valencia is fresh in the mind.
But team principal James Barclay doesn’t see any common trait from the Valencia weekend that casts doubt over Jaguar’s form at Puebla.
Both Sam Bird and Mitch Evans had to deal with a variety of factors in the two Valencia races, during which Jaguar’s 17-point teams’ championship lead over Mercedes became a 23-point deficit. Mercedes’ subsequent Monaco disaster means Jaguar is now back within two points.
Like the majority of the field, Bird and Evans were compromised in the first Valencia race due to the FIA’s energy reduction miscalculation when Bird was in line for a top six result.
On the Sunday in Spain, both Jaguars were on the back foot due to their disadvantaged qualifying groups in wet but drying conditions.
However, there were also a variety of technical issues which hampered the team’s pace at Valencia. These ranged from a difficulty in the rotational dynamics of the cars in some of the corners and also an undisclosed technical issue which has since been rectified.
Barclay stated that just because Jaguar “didn’t have a great weekend” at Valencia it didn’t necessarily the car “didn’t have the potential” to do so.
“Quite honestly, we had a combination of factors in Valencia and we probably went a little bit wrong on set-up when we first turned up at the weekend,” Barclay told The Race.
“We had potential to score good points but we probably didn’t quite getting the rub in terms of getting clean races to come through. From that perspective, our strategy was very strong.
“We had a slight issue at the end of the race – we know what that was – and it wasn’t a pace issue in the car.
“It’s more of a case of we didn’t actually optimise the weekend and we didn’t get the result and the points we should have done.”
Jaguar conducts a large chunk of its private development testing at specially configured tracks at the Abingdon airfield facility in Oxfordshire, UK.
It has a permanent facility at the RAF base where it stores equipment and has created various course layouts to assist with the potential of added track variety for the present season, which was always likely to be amended due to the ongoing pandemic.
The Valencia results led some to suggest that the Jaguar I-Type4 raced by Bird and Evans had an inherent issue with a particular radius of corner but this has been discounted by the team.
“It’s definitely not a concern about permanent tracks, and in fact, if you look at Mexico last year we were very strong,” Barclay said, in reference to Formula E using a shortened version of Formula 1’s Mexico City track for its round in the nation up to now.
“From our side, we treat every circuit as a new challenge. But we’ve shown that the car is quick at a variety of circuits now.”
Jaguar returned to points scoring form in Monaco last month with Evans’s third place and Bird forging through the pack to seventh place after starting a lowly 16th.
As an average Jaguar has the best finishing position of the 2021 to date in sixth place, yet it is only the seventh best of the 12 teams on average in qualifying with a mean start position of 12th.
