The Hamilton-beating engineer carrying Mercedes to FE glory

The case for Mercedes being the greatest Formula 1 team of all time grows stronger with each season. Since the 2014 introduction of hybrid powertrains it has swept all in its path to one side and, perhaps most impressively, continued that dominance through the regulation changes introduced for 2017. It has matched Ferrari's record of six constructors' titles on the bounce and is set for more.

Why, then, would you swap it all to enter the most unpredictable championship going, where there can be no guarantee of immediate success? That's the path taken by Tony Ross, the chief race engineer of the Mercedes Formula E team.

His career began in a different field - working in the road car division at Rover - before joining Nissan Motorsport for its Primera touring car attack in 1994. A three-year stint was marred by the tragic death of Kieth O'dor at Avus in 1995 and the manufacturer's withdrawal from the British Touring Car Championship.

From there he moved across to Williams for two years as it embarked on the V12 Le Mans project with BMW. That in turn led to a berth at the Williams grand prix team on its testing programme. As both BMW and Michelin came into F1, Ross spent most of his time overseeing the mileage of drivers Tom Kristensen and Jorg Muller, before a call from Patrick Head boosted him to the race team as an engineer for Juan Pablo Montoya and then a season with Nick Heidfeld.

In 2006, however, Ross forged a partnership that would yield him his greatest success to date as he was assigned to be the race engineer for Nico Rosberg. They remained together at Williams until Rosberg headed to the newly rebadged Mercedes team in 2010 and, after a year on the pitwall for Rubens Barrichello, in 2011 Ross followed suit.

"At that stage, the team had already changed into Mercedes but it was much smaller because they had to get rid of so many people in that transfer zone between Brawn GP and the first year of Mercedes," Ross says. "When I joined, it hadn't been built up to the level that it is now."

As a race engineer, Ross was known for his howling radio messages that greeted each of Rosberg's 23 wins, and in 2016 it was their side of the garage that beat Lewis Hamilton to the drivers' championship, while also securing a third consecutive teams' trophy.

"As a race engineer you're always learning - if you're not learning, you're not going anywhere" Tony Ross

Ross was no less surprised than the rest of motorsport when Rosberg promptly walked away at the end of year: "When Nico rang me up before the announcement, I thought, 'Right, is he still at a party somewhere?' Really, it was a shock."

After two seasons spent race engineering for Valtteri Bottas, at the end of 2018 the call came for Ross to switch to the fledgling HWA Racelab FE concern - for which he'd already made appearances at Valencia testing as a consultant - in anticipation of Mercedes joining the grid for 2019-20. As Ross puts it, the opportunity to take on more responsibility in a fresh environment was one he couldn't ignore.

"In F1, like many things, as a race engineer it's like, 'What am I going to do next?'" he says. "You're always learning - if you're not learning, you're not going anywhere - but it starts to peel off and the advances aren't as much.

"It was an opportunity, 'Right, we're going to go into Formula E. Are you interested in taking part?' It was a really good chance for something different. As a race engineer, you're managing people - the performance engineer, the engine engineer - but you're not managing the whole engineering department, which is what's happening now.

"I didn't particularly want to be a race engineer forever, but I didn't want to make a stupid move. This is something new and a challenge."

Ross was chosen to lay the ground work for the full Mercedes FE entry not only due to his experience, but also his tireless commitment, which has made a real impression on the team's rookie driver Nyck de Vries.

"Honestly, I have never seen anyone in my life that is as dedicated to their work," says the reigning Formula 2 champion.

"Tony works 24/7. I recall a moment that he went skiing with his family a couple of months ago and I told him, 'Please keep your laptop shut for some time!', but still he refused. He felt like he had to get on top of things. He's very impressive and very highly dedicated to his passion."

HWA was up against it in 2018-19. Not only was it going in green to an arena that so rarely permits one team to dominate, but also resources had been stretched thinly in the build-up. Fresh from guiding Gary Paffett to the 2018 DTM crown in Mercedes' swansong year at Hockenheim, within a day of the 14 October season finale the engineering staff and freight were on their way to the Circuit Ricardo Tormo for the 16 October FE test.

Steps were taken to ease the load, namely HWA ran a customer powertrain from the Venturi outfit. It also employed Lucas di Grassi's FE title-winning race engineer Franco Chiocchetti as the head of track operations. The main target was to adapt to the FE schedule and tighten up on strategy while, back at the High Performance Powertrains site in Brixworth, work was underway to develop the season six running gear with which Mercedes would make its all-electric bow.

A Rome E-Prix podium for Stoffel Vandoorne was the highpoint for HWA, as it finished ninth in the championship - one place behind Venturi and with half as many points. Vandoorne has bettered that from the off in the current 2019-20 campaign, with two third places in the opening two races in Saudi Arabia.

Had it not been for Mercedes overcooling the battery on de Vries' car in Santiago - frequent procedural errors have stunted his side of the garage - it would have been a podium hat-trick.

Mercedes is an automotive leviathan, its resources are vast and HPP has been largely responsible for the hybrid-era F1 domination, but nevertheless the improvement in FE results so far this term has been marked. Currently fifth in the standings, it's romped clear of fellow rookie and ninth-placed Porsche.

"We had a lot of problems in Valencia testing and we thought coming into this season we were going to have our work cut out," Ross says. "And we did, it was still difficult, [but] we've just been trying to build the procedures up so that we're able to operate at a sensible level.

"The big difference with F1 is that the performance differentiation is very much in the aero these days. It used to be in the powertrain back in 2014 and you can still get differences, but it's all in the aero [now]" Tony Ross

"You can quite easily come away with two DNFs - drivers can get caught up, get hit or anything like that, so there's the element of luck in there. Our two drivers are sensible, they're not unnecessarily taking massive risks.

"We're not top of the league by any means, we don't think. There are a number of other cars that are quicker, we're sensibly midfield. I don't think we're under any illusions. We still make mistakes, we have still lost podiums but I think we have just made a few less than other people."

The biggest role change for Ross has been his move from focusing solely on one car to now overseeing the whole garage. Along with team principal Ian James, he has to take a step back for a more holistic approach rather than get bogged down in the minutiae. He's needed to loosen the reins and let race engineers Albert Lau (de Vries) and Marius Meier-Diedrich (Vandoorne) manage their own cars, while he hones in on boosting the team's overall performance.

But, as de Vries explains, that hasn't prevented Ross from being there to support his drivers.

"It's an absolute honour to work with people like Tony," he says. "I've learned to know him as the technical leader and he passes on the work to all the engineers that you work with. He has the ability to stay calm and oversee everything.

"He gives the drivers confidence. Certainly, last year, Tony was very supportive.

"It was clear that the first priority for me was to seal the [F2] championship. That box was ticked and we could then move on to our next new chapter together. Tony and me had several conversations about how to approach certain things and, especially now working together, trying to achieve the best possible results."

Since part of the appeal for Ross in moving away from F1 was to eradicate any notion that his career or his learning was stagnating, he's come to appreciate the areas where FE has the leg up on its combustion engine counterparts.

When asked what aspects of FE excite him more than F1, he replies: "I love the single-day format. It's a real a challenge to deal with, a kind of Pandora's box. You can do a lot in FE but it's deliberately limited to try to keep costs down. But we're looking to get a performance differentiation over the other teams to win.

"In F1, it's completely different. It's a three-day event. The big difference with F1 is that the performance differentiation is very much in the aero these days. It used to be in the powertrain back in 2014 and you can still get differences, but it's all in the aero.

"If you look at Williams versus Mercedes, it's exactly the same power unit, it's just the aero that's making the difference. You don't have that in FE. You have powertrains, which, OK, are different, but they're electric motors so the differences are much smaller.

"That's what HPP have to do. They have to maximise what they have, but what they have to work with is less than in F1. As anyone can see, trying to actually win consistently in FE, especially with the [group] qualifying format, is difficult.

"Don't take it away from F1 - in terms of the technology, that is the pinnacle. But it's very much an iteration-on-iteration formula, so the engineers are just fine-tuning. With FE, it's the first time that HPP have done a powertrain that's of that kind of [all-electric] power output so it's new for them and the steps are bigger.

"You still have to treat F1 and FE as very different. FE cars have very little downforce compared to F1 and, I think quite rightly, they try to separate the cars and not try to combine them in the championship. If you look at FE, the racing is really exciting and the race format is really good."

That's as maybe, but signs point to the future relationship between F1 and FE being rockier than ever. Earlier this year, and before priorities switched to responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the UK government began a consultation period to bring forward a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2035.

"It will be interesting to see what happens with F1 because it does cost so much. As a result, you get the differentiation that you get now, whereas in FE, realistically, anybody can win" Tony Ross

Not only would this see the deadline move five years closer, but the revised laws would include hybrid road cars in the restrictions also. More so, if other territories impose similar legislation, the impact on top-flight motorsport will be deep. Since day dot, FE has held an exclusive electric licence with the FIA for 25 seasons that would, in theory, prevent F1 from fully transitioning. Such deals, however, can always be rewritten for a price.

Whether the grand prix scene moves in that way, merges with FE, or pursues an alternative fuel source such as hydrogen is still open to debate. As someone with an intimate knowledge of both paddocks and powertrains, Ross can assess the lie of the land.

"In terms of how the batteries are encased and that kind of thing, there are developments that are bringing improvements, but there's not been the step needed for them to compete in the same way with fossil fuels," he says.

"At the moment, yes, both F1 and FE need to exist and they will both push each other. But FE, as a form of entertainment, is different to F1. It will be interesting to see what happens with F1 because it does cost so much. As a result, you get the differentiation that you get now, whereas in FE, realistically, anybody can win."

And that is the major landmark change for Ross. Of the 100 races between 2014 and 2018, Mercedes won a staggering 74. Although he was dedicated to Rosberg then Bottas, when often Hamilton would vanquish the pair, there was plenty of solace to be taken in that a Silver Arrow would likely bag the spoils.

Ross has left that level of command well behind in FE, but he reckons the challenges have brought the squad closer together rather than being the source of frustration.

"You've got to be grateful for what you've had," Ross says. "It's a First World problem in F1, when you've kind of got to decide which driver wins. Whereas in FE, it's more like, 'Right, where are we going to finish? Are we going to finish first or out of the points?'.

"As a championship, it's really good. It brings everybody together, and it makes it harder to differentiate. Those that win prove that they are top."

Ross might well be considered a modern-day Mercedes mainstay. His stint at the marque outlasted that of more recognised engineering figureheads Ross Brawn and Paddy Lowe.

But he traded that in to embark on a new learning curve in an arena where success, when it does arrive, will be more hard-fought than any of the race wins he has presided over to date.