Jaguar's Formula E debut: What we've learned so far

Information has been sparse from Jaguar's private testing programme ahead of its Formula E debut. We knew it had opted to use all 15 days that it had available. We knew Adam Carroll had been a key player. And we knew it would be using the official Donington Park test to evaluate its driver line-up.

But that left a lot of unanswered questions.

A manufacturer ending a 12-year absence topline racing was always going to capture interest. The fact that it's one of British motorsport's most iconic marques entering the young electric single-seater series only intensifies that.

Although teams building their own powertrains get 15 days of private testing, Donington tends to mark the first time those new powertrains are fitted to their race chassis rather than test cars - which means there's still a shakedown element to the process and teams' job lists are lengthy.

The team with the most to do - understandably - is Jaguar.

While other teams will have a good idea of where they stand with their new powertrains, if only on a 'where are we compared to last year?' basis, for Jaguar this process is all-new.

Donington wouldn't just be a shakedown - it would be the first chance to see Jaguar's team gelling, the first chance to see it run two cars at once, the first chance to see where the I-Type 1 might settle into the early pecking order.

Jaguar's not saying much. There's little coming out officially, and its drivers being sworn to secrecy because of the ongoing line-up evaluation means there's no flow of information from them either.

It's likely to open up about its powertrain specification before the first round in Hong Kong in October, but what we know for now is its inverter is mounted atop the battery - Renault and DS mount it below, for a lower centre of gravity - it appears to have one motor and, as is becoming the norm, a two-speed gearbox.

Of course, it's performance that people really care about. The short answer is we don't know how fast the Jaguar is. But there are some clues.

On face value, it would be generous to even file the pace it has shown on the first two days under 'solid'. Alex Lynn was sixth quickest on the opening day, but 1.2 seconds off the time set by Renault e.dams driver Sebastien Buemi in qualifying trim (200kW of power).

On Wednesday, Carroll was also more than a second off Jean-Eric Vergne's record-setting pace in the Renault-powered Techeetah entry. That made Jaguar the slowest of the 10 teams in qualifying trim. And it was a similar story at 'race pace'. On the second day, Jaguar was the slowest at 170kW - Carroll's 1m33.196s just over a second shy of Buemi's 1m32.048s.

However, something the timing screens don't tell you is that when everyone was going out chasing purple sectors on Wednesday morning, Jaguar didn't complete a 200kW lap on new tyres. Or that it has much more data to collect than other teams, and it's starting from a considerably lower base.

That means Jaguar, which is run by Williams Advanced Engineering, is being careful not to pursue the wrong things. One reason Carroll is driving on all three days here, with Lynn, Mitch Evans and Harry Tincknell getting a day apiece in the second car, is that having conducted most of the private testing for the team he offers a point of consistency. He acts as a common variable and, while the team won't say as such, looks quite likely to take one of the seats as well.

Jaguar is therefore doing a lot of data collection with Carroll's car, which is being engineered by Patrick Coorey (pictured), Sam Bird's engineer from DS Virgin Racing last year. There are different maps to run, brake balances to fine-tune, regeneration settings to play with - and more.

Every team up and down the pitlane will say the same thing, that the pursuit of lap time is not important. Well, if that was the case, Mahindra wouldn't be a second quicker than it was at this stage last year. Multiple drivers wouldn't be under the lap record. Vergne wouldn't be setting the timing screens purple on Techeetah's second day of running a Formula E car.

For Jaguar, the pursuit of lap time is genuinely not important. Its focus has been on logging laps, and working through programmes.

There was talk of it struggling in private, of it suffering the sort of technical gremlins - like overheating - that blighted most teams during the development phase of a first powertrain. Well, its reliability has been impressive at Donington (apart from an electrical glitch that stopped Evans at the end of Wednesday).

Over the first two days Jaguar racked up 130 laps - basically the same as DS Virgin, Abt and Venturi and more than Mahindra, Andretti, Faraday Future Dragon Racing and NextEV have managed. From a powertrain perspective Renault has a mileage advantage by virtue of Techeetah's customer deal. But last year at the same point Renault had managed 147 laps.

The point is that in reliability terms Jaguar is right in the ballpark, which is good going considering there are several people in the paddock that had heard the same negative stories from private testing. And even better going when you consider it has been working on this since the end of 2015.

Powertrain manufacturers from 2015/16 - the likes of Renault, Abt and DS, who have to be Jaguar's targets for this season - were working on their concepts from mid-2014. The headstart is probably the other side of 18 months, not just a year.

Back in July there were tales of caution from Jaguar team director James Barclay and race director Craig Wilson, who is also managing director of Williams Advanced Engineering.

"When we got confirmation [in December] it left us a short timeline," said Barclay. "It compromised the development time we've had.

"But if we weren't in a position to achieve a competitive package we wouldn't have accepted that."

Wilson added: "Yes, Jaguar is a very powerful brand and there's expectation around that. But it's a 100-metre race and you're giving your competitors a three-second headstart."

Was that downplaying of expectations the result of a difficult start to testing? At this stage it was two-thirds of the way through its programme, and given the stories it's probably a bit too easy to retro-fit those comments to a Jaguar FE programme that was having a difficult birth.

What we know right now is that the car looks reliable and has not, it is believed, flexed its muscles. So, to be a second away from the benchmark in qualifying and race trim is good going at this stage.

"In your first year you just might catch them at the line," said Wilson last month, suggesting Jaguar would have more to learn over the season and therefore it's progression curve would extend further than its rivals.

That would be a very sensible lesson to take away from its first public appearance.

Jaguar's not the only team that's learning a lot at Donington. The new Techeetah squad is running its Renault powertrain for the first time, and having not been eligible for any private testing that means it has fewer opportunities to iron out any issues, in both the car and the ex-Team Aguri set-up.

And like Jaguar, Faraday Future Dragon Racing is going through the process of developing its own technology for the first time - though its kit bares a lot of resemblance to Mahindra's, which, it is understood, has leant more than a helping hand to the architecture of the Penske 701-EV.

It will be fascinating to see how a driver of Vergne's calibre performs in a new team with the same powertrain as defending champion Sebastien Buemi, and what the Dragon team can do with the backing from an aggressive, futuristic company in Faraday Future (also the championship's first US manufacturer).

But these are just sub-plots to the bigger story. What's new in FE? Jaguar. The Big Cat's back. We're just waiting to see how sharp its claws are.