MERCEDES AND PORSCHE GUNNING FOR THE TITLE

Mercedes and Porsche want to topple incumbent king DS Techeetah in their second seasons in FE. This target has been placed knowing how hotly contested FE is, that consistency and incremental gains are the keys to a sustained title push.

For Mercedes, it enters the new campaign with its house in order. It retains Stoffel Vandoorne, and Nyck de Vries after his starring rookie season. The goal is to pick up from where it ended the 2019-20 campaign. In the final Berlin race, polesitter Vandoorne led in comfort as de Vries progressed from fourth to deliver a 1-2 finish. It was a commanding maiden victory.

Mercedes has introduced a new car from the kick-off but, aping the tactics that have borne so much fruit for the marque in F1, there’s not been a clean sheet of paper. Team principal Ian James says: “Conceptually, it’s an evolution. But there isn’t really any component part we haven’t touched, redesigned and gone at again.”

A season of the HWA Racelab forerunner aside, it was a debut campaign that returned a superb third in the constructors’ chart. But it was tinged by operational and reliability errors.

“We haven’t fallen into the trap of thinking we’ve suddenly turned a corner and cracked it and we’ve got it made,” adds James. “Quite the opposite, we know actually how precarious the situation can be. Our rookie year is now behind us. We cannot make errors twice, that’s clear.”

Porsche has further to climb to claim the trophy, having finished eighth last term. But from fans and the boardroom, there’s a weight of expectation that comes with its glittering track record in motorsport. As such, the intention from Porsche head of FE operations Amiel Lindesay is clear.

His target is “to win the championship. The podium was the target [in 2019-20] – this year we expect to have a car and team that can win races and contend for the championship.”

That’s far from being a flight of fantasy from the former 919 Hybrid LMP1 crew chief.

To deliver, EX-BMW chief mechanic James Lindesay has come in as team manager, with his brother Amiel having covered that role in addition to his own last season. Most notably, ex-mahindra Racing driver Pascal Wehrlein replaces Neel Jani.

Alongside the incumbent Andre Lotterer, neither driver nor the team has won an FE race so far. All need to shake that monkey off their back in 2021.

Amiel Lindesay adds: “What we’ve really worked on for season seven is to be consistently up there. The ups and downs we had last year… we need to smooth it out.”

In a bid to address this, during private tests, Porsche has visited a variety of tracks to mimic real-world FE corners better than the unrepresentative official pre-season testing venue in Valencia.

Make no mistake, Mercedes and Porsche are on course for that so-called difficult second album in a field that’s as competitive, if not more so, than any other in racing. Both need to make the bad days fewer and farther between. Working on race pace will aid that mission for both as they bid to win the top prize in electric motorsport.