Techeetah takes DS deal

FORMULA E

Techeetah has confirmed that its long-rumoured partnership with DS Automobiles, to make the team a works manufacturer squad, will come into effect ahead of the 2018-19 Formula E season.

The Chinese team has been a Renault customer squad for the past two seasons but will now take over from Virgin Racing as the DS works team.

This is a big change for both squads.

For Techeetah, which rose out of the former Team Aguri operation at the end of 2015-16, it now has the works backing that comes with 15 days of private testing that manufacturers are permitted to use ahead of FE’S official pre-season testing.

Techeetah boss Mark Preston credited FE’S inaugural rookie test last January for helping the squad make the significant progress that boosted it to Jean-eric Vergne’s 2017-18 title and what eventually became a narrow defeat to Audi in the teams’ championship. Before the official pre-season testing in October 2017, Techeetah had enjoyed zero running due to its customer status, and heading into the season it had completed just three days compared to its rivals’ 18.

DS opted not to develop its powertrain ahead of 2017-18. That left Virgin’s Sam Bird (chasing Vergne, above) battling with an overweight and inefficient package that ultimately cost him in the recent New York season finale. So now Techeetah gets the potential benefit of the work that DS has been doing ahead of the next campaign.

Intriguingly, the Techeetah statement announcing the new arrangement explained that “full details of the partnership, including logo, livery, management and driver line-up will be revealed October 1 2018”. But it is expected that Vergne and Andre Lotterer will continue as its driver partnership. “Next year with a manufacturer, more budget, we should be able to do very well,” Vergne said in New York. “We’re still a young team, everybody learns, and it should keep everybody highly motivated to go and get the teams’ championship next season.”

The change is not necessarily bad for Virgin. The team released a statement on Monday thanking DS for the success they had achieved together and explained that it is close to revealing the powertrain it will buy for season five, which is understood to be Audi’s. The deal will be announced in the coming weeks.

That does mean that Virgin now loses the private manufacturer running as it joins the customer ranks alongside the incoming HWA (Venturi). But, once it had solved its early reliability dramas, Audi was largely unstoppable at the end of the most recent campaign. Lucas di Grassi was on the podium in each of the last seven races, and only Vergne’s sterling defence in the second New York race stopped

Audi sweeping the last four race wins.

Even though DS and other FE manufacturers such as Nissan – which takes over Renault technology after the company, like DS, opted not to develop for 2017-18 – will enter the forthcoming season after a year of work, Virgin and

Bird armed with Audi technology should be a force to be reckoned with in 2018-19.