August 2022 was explosive for Stoffel Vandoorne and Mitch Evans and they were the clear pace and points influencers in Formula E.
Almost in a class of their own from a title fight perspective, they had the Gen2 car licked and they were showing the rest who were the bosses.
Vandoorne bagged his well-deserved title. Evans took four wins, a runners-up position and a great deal of the plaudits. For both, the adulation was well deserved.
February 2023: Evans and Vandoorne sit down with The Race to mull over the first three races. Between them, these rivals on the track but great friends off it, have amassed just 12 points so far this year and sit ninth and 15th in the standings respectively.
Both have high hopes for a rejuvenation this weekend in Hyderabad, a city that clearly thrives on chaos and sensory overflow.
Evans led the early stages of the last race in Diriyah but then succumbed to a poorly executed energy strategy and came a despondent sixth inserted into the gearbox of Jake Hughes’ McLaren Nissan.
Back to the chaos. This is what could tip both drivers back into contention this weekend. Evans won superbly in Jakarta last season where there was a similar vibe of the dice being loaded from the start in terms of the most organised coming to the fore.
He did the same in Seoul, another new track.
“I definitely try and look back on those races where you’ve been strong with new locations, and you want to try and bring that same momentum into a new location like here,” reckons Evans.
“They are kind of similar climates in terms of temperature. It’s not as humid here, but it’s quite hot.
“We understood the Gen2 car more to be sort of able to, let’s say, pre-empt the circuits a lot better.
“I’ve always been quite good at learning tracks quickly. Especially with a one-day format. When you’re a double-header, you can sort of maybe build up to a little bit more, but when you have a one-day format, you just have to get into it and get ahead of the game.
“I’m hoping we can replicate that. But there’s a few other variables now that we didn’t have in those [Gen2] races and that’s just understanding what you need from the tyre.”
There lies the crux of the Hyderabad weekend. Who can use skill, homework and forecasting of how the new Hankook tyre will work in its first genuine hot race?
Getting this rubber into a working window is completely different to the previous Michelin rubber. That is obvious. Less apparent though has been the behaviour of the tyre in what you’d call middling temperatures at Mexico City.
That didn’t correlate much to the private testing completed by teams on a variety of circuit, usually far-flung glamourless tracks such as Calafat, Almeria, Mallorca and Albacete (remember that one, early 1990s Formula 3000 fans?).
“The tyres have behaved a lot differently to what we’re expecting,” confirms Evans.
“It’s definitely a very sensitive tyre. That’s not just in terms of getting into its working range, but just driving the car. It’s very unforgiving.”
The lateral side of the tyres is a tough challenge for drivers with the power now available. Trying to put that down in a working range that is so narrow is what is outfoxing some teams, notably Jaguar at Mexico City and DS Penske in Diriyah.
Evans felt the tyres gave off a ‘numbness’ in Diriyah and while that sounds like a poor prognosis, it is the same fate several drivers have felt in the races so far.
Vandoorne carves a similarly frustrated figure to Evans as the whirr of the Hyderabad madhouse envelopes around us in the paddock.
The shock of Vandoorne finishing 10th, 11th and 20th in the first three races has now subsided. The crystal clarity in the reigning champion’s eyes yelps, ‘we have issues, they may run deep, but equally there is hope’.
“There’s a little bit of a trend that we need to do better as a team, but as a manufacturer, as well,” says Vandoorne.
“Part of that is definitely in set-up, optimisation, run-plan optimisation and then we need to see where we are exactly.
“I expect we’ll make another little step forward this weekend, but I don’t feel like it’s going to be like a complete turnaround from one weekend to another or something.
“I don’t know, maybe we’ll have a positive surprise. But I feel like it’ll be an incremental step to get back to a proper performance.”
Modest expectations then for Vandoorne. Ever the realist he knows when he’s not really in the game. But when a team tops free practice sessions and seems to be a contender before slumping it can rack the brain to maddening frustration too.
That is multiplied when you consider that Vandoorne and team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne looked so strong at the pre-season Valencia test, as did Stellantis stablemate Maserati MSG.
“Everyone was doing a lot of laps to get down to lap times and the tyres needed a lot of energy before they really worked, let’s say,” suggests Vandoorne.
“I don’t know if Hankook changed anything between then and the first race or something, but the tyres have been behaving quite differently at all the other circuits.”
Not looking to shift blame for a second, Vandoorne quickly caveats that with “we’ve not done a good enough job at capturing that beforehand”.
Hankook is adamant that there is as much parity as possible in the sets supplied in its first season in Formula E, but there have been the odd occasion when teams have privately questioned the consistency of what they are receiving.
Vandoorne alludes to that when he says that “there have been occasions in Valencia, for example, where there was kind of a clear preference for one set for some reason.
“They gave us a little bit more potential than the other ones.
“So maybe there are sometimes small differences, but on a race weekend it is extremely difficult to know that.”
That is because the teams mix sets in the crucial qualifying format.
But one thing that is for sure is that both Vandoorne and Evans have to start getting big points on the board soon if they are to become the leading challengers to Porsche and Andretti.
Vandoorne has finished races with an energy rich car which just adds another layer of frustration for him to deal with. Part of that has come from the propensity for the FIA to be conservative on how many laps it has added to races affected by safety car periods.
This has stymied Vandoorne particularly as the flat-out finishes at both Diriyah and Mexico City have meant he has become stuck in the midfield rut and unable to use his hard earned efficiency advantage.
Vandoorne and Evans in no way come as a pair. Yet, their fight to regain ‘big points’ hero status is perfectly synchronised this weekend in the powder keg of the Hyderabad E-Prix.
Keyword: Why Formula E’s old heroes struggling are so much in 2023