Envision Racing has reached a fascinating crossroads in its Formula E existence as it attempts to execute a potential title-winning strategy across the final five races of the 2023 Formula E season.
But it’s a situation in which the Chinese-owned, UK-based team is battling against significant odds that hinge on whether it ultimately fulfils the role of surprise-but-unrequited underdog again or moves up to the lofty echelons of a certified title winner.
Whether it can fulfil its hard work and promise this season will be discovered in the coming races. For now, at least, it can look back on what it has achieved with pride.
That’s because it entered the present season with some major tasks on its hands as it moved from Audi to Jaguar power. That, in addition to the fundamental shifts that Gen3 brought, meant that for a relatively modest team in terms of headcount and resources compared to the manufacturers, Envision was expected to be firmly mired in the midfield and no more.
But should we be surprised that it’s spectacularly exceeded those predictions? This is, after all, a team that has consistently shadow-boxed its way to some great victories in the past and, in the case of the 2017-18 season, even had a brief tilt at the title with Sam Bird clawing at ultimate champion Jean-Eric Vergne.
What makes Envision’s progress even more noteworthy this season is that despite some public denials from team principal Sylvain Filippi, it has gone through significant change in the last four years.
The faces at the forefront of the team remain the same, in Filippi, team manager Leon Price, and CEO Franz Jung. But behind the scenes there was a technical takeover that meant several engineers left the team and a new regime was placed in charge.
That came under the jurisdiction of former Red Bull F1 engineer Mike Lugg. It wasn’t always popular within some elements of the old organisation but no one can say that it hasn’t achieved results, especially this season. Envision has out-scored its tech provider Jaguar by 19 points and leads the chase of Porsche as the teams’ championship race reaches its final furlongs.
Envision is dwarfed by Jaguar on personnel headcount. While 42 are employed full-time by Envision, The Race understands that at least 90 are by the Big Cat. This though obviously includes designers, build staff and procurement officers as part of Jaguar’s manufacturer status.
The partnership between the two is clearly close. They worked together through the early challenges of the Gen3 design – and they were substantial. These included a number of accidents right up to, and including at, the first race in Mexico City.
That was when an incident for Mitch Evans at the end of the first free practice session triggered a full-on crisis-mode meeting, one in which The Race understands a complete withdrawal of the cars from the event was discussed.
But Envision and Jaguar came through it together and it appears to have made the partnership even closer. That partnership has brought Envision two wins and a current runner-up position in the teams’ standings.
Speaking to The Race at the pre-season test at Valencia last December, Envision chief Filippi said “the challenge for us is that we have to integrate to the manufacturer, and it is probably as easy as it could be because of the proximity”.
That reflected the geographical closeness of Envision’s base at Silverstone and Jaguar’s at Grove. But that literal closeness is matched by the engineering-led philosophy of both entities too. New software, new controls, new everything had to be digested by Envision, and unlike Jaguar it didn’t have bespoke track-testing data to instantly pour over.
In fact, both Sebastien Buemi and Nick Cassidy had such a paucity of running pre-Mexico that the team went into the race considering it a test of sorts. It came away with a double-points score, Buemi in sixth and Cassidy in ninth.
That was impressive and it laid a foundation for many more milestones to be hit early in the campaign, including Buemi’s pole next time out in Riyadh, Cassidy’s podium in Hyderabad (although it should have been a double podium at least had it not been for Buemi’s harsh penalty for a non-overpower) and of course Cassidy’s back-to-back wins in Berlin and Monaco.
Filippi, again speaking at Valencia last December, contextualised the scope of the challenge saying that the team went from “zero to 100” with the Gen3 project.
“There is not a single thing carried [over] from Audi,” he added.
“So, for the drivers, it’s a huge challenge. new software, new controls, new steering wheel, learning different code names for everything, literally.
“There is a different principle of energy management, set-up, etc. So, it’s basically the same as from Gen1 to Gen2 but the big difference is that the level of complexity is 10 times [what it was]. The architecture is literally 10 times more complex, so to learn all of that in one week here is a huge, huge, huge task.”
Envision has risen to it. Now the question is whether it can sustain what it has achieved and use it to do something it has not done before: win a title.
You’ll find no shortage of doubters in the paddock. They argue Envision won’t beat Jaguar and Porsche because it doesn’t have the resources to do so. This is fatuous to some extent because it already has parity in just about every technical area. What it can’t control is the rate of development in software because that ultimately is up to Jaguar.
It’s a key part of Formula E and it is one that is testing the patience of some other manufacturer/customer relationships in the paddock right now. From the Jaguar-Envision axis there has not been a hint of that.
For the tangible components, as per article 8.3 of the manufacturer registration rules ‘the manufacturer acknowledges that the technical specifications and governing rules are subject to amendment by the FIA from time to time’.
This also requires a manufacturer to be ‘responsible (at its own cost) for all research and development associated with the manufacturer’s perimeter (Article 5.7), including any changes that may be necessitated by any amendment to the technical specifications or the governing rules’.
Those perimeters include aero, suspension, powertrain, cooling, transmission, brakes and ballast – so cover off the vast majority of the car. Envision is allowed four of the eight extra test days allowed for customer supplying manufacturers, so it at least gets something.
The intriguing question though is what Jaguar relays to Envision from the other bespoke manufacturer test days, of which there are 16 in total for Jaguar. That is only known between the two teams.
The beauty of Formula E is that three of the five customer teams – Envision, Andretti and Maserati – have won races this season. Envision has the same amount of wins, two, as Jaguar; Porsche has three wins to Andretti’s one; and Maserati and DS (which despite their differing brands, use the same powertrain) have one apiece.
Further down the field, McLaren is outscoring Nissan and Abt has got one over Mahindra in several races. The model works brilliantly. Envision knows that because it has been doing it for the last eight years, firstly with DS from 2015-18 and then with Audi from 2018-22.
With that experience of tapping into the knowledge of, and forging a strong relationship with, a quality supplier, it is no surprise that Envision is clearly the best of the non-manufacturer teams. Can it pull off beating Jaguar this season? It absolutely can, yet it will need a few slices of luck along the way and its new driver Buemi to convert the potential he has shown into much stronger points.
Buemi has scored 51% fewer points than team-mate Cassidy and a pair of fourth places is a poor return for his efforts. He’s had some outrageously bad luck but there is a substantive argument to say that, had he not lost his third place in Hyderabad and then got drop-kicked out of contention in Cape Town (by Pascal Wehrlein) and in Sao Paulo (by Max Guenther), Envision would be heading the teams’ points table right now.
Looking at the qualifying averages, Envision is slightly ahead of Jaguar with an average starting position of 8.0 to Jaguar’s 8.6.
Envision has often struggled to maintain its challenges for the ultimate prizes. The prime example was in the firsts Gen2 season (2018-19) when Robin Frijns appeared to have title momentum after a win in Paris and a podium in Monaco. He and the team drifted away but finished strongly with a second win of the season in New York City.
But it was too late, as it was too in 2021 when Frijns was in a similarly decent position only for a dreadful final weekend in Berlin that meant he plummeted from second to fifth in the blink of an eye.
If this season is to be any different Envision needs to ensure it manages both its unlucky and indifferent days better than it has done in the past. That clearly includes Cassidy as well, who needlessly threw away points in Jakarta.
If it can finish the job it started in 2023 then Envision will proffer headline writers with slam-dunk ‘dark horse’ and ‘giantkiller’ prompts to celebrate what would ultimately be a remarkable story of cultivating a title that, at the first round just six months ago, felt like nothing other than a pipedream.
Keyword: An underdog’s title dream is on – if it avoids past pitfalls