What we learned from Formula E's Valencia test

Maximilian Guenther claimed pre-season bragging rights for the BMW Andretti Formula E team by setting the fastest time on the final day of testing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia. But while the German could be pleased with maintaining his place at the top of the pile from the 2019 tests, whether it provides an accurate form guide for the season ahead is questionable.

Meanwhile there were plenty of old faces in new places to provide intrigue, new technology was on show and there were significant off-track developments in the political sphere too. Here's what we learned.

1. Valencia keeps the guessing game alive

As Autosport explained last week, Formula E's pre-season testing venue is unrepresentative of the tracks you'll find on the calendar. It's conventional as circuits go, fast and flowing and smooth, but precisely because of this it's not comparable to the tight and bumpy layouts the championship frequents.

PLUS: How Formula E's pre-season test venue provides confusion and clarity

Even before you factor in different race simulation and energy management programmes employed by each of the teams, let alone any potential sandbagging to mask outright performance, taking the timing screens as gospel must be met with caution.

The nature of electric powertrains, in motorsport or in road cars, is that they deliver instant torque. Acceleration is king and where the advantage can be found. This comes from the surge out of low-speed corners, not the quicker turns in Valencia. With the main straight chicane binned off for 2020, nothing at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo gives an accurate gauge as to which car does it best.

The other key variable, aside from powertrains, in FE is with suspension and damper development. As well as improving the overall handling, the better the springs are set-up the more they allow the rubber to stay in contact with the track to really maximise that acceleration.

Look at any FE track, whether it be the concrete expansion joints of Tempelhof Airport or the transition from one surface to another in Santiago, or the crowns and cambers of racing on public roads in Paris. They are bumpy, and the Circuit Ricardo Tormo isn't.

So as much as Guenther can be buoyed by his FE record-setting pace at the venue, the truth is what we know for certain is that we don't know the full picture at all. That's why for the manufacturer teams, private testing is vitally important as they can reproduce representative conditions much more readily.

2. But we should expect one of the most competitive seasons ever

Calling Formula E 'unpredictable' is a little bit of a cop out, especially in recent seasons. There can be large periods of processional running in the races and for the last three years, a DS Techeetah driver has been crowned champion - on two of those occasions, Jean-Eric Vergne in 2017-18 and Antonio Felix da Costa last season, they've ran away with it.

Although it must be taken with a pinch of salt after six races were held all at one venue last season, of the 11 races, seven were won by the polesitter.

Just 0.578s split the whole 24-car field. And new Jaguar Racing driver Sam Bird (23rd) and Audi's Lucas di Grassi (24th) are part of those nine teams that should be in the hunt

The better description for FE is that it's supremely competitive. And while the Circuit Ricardo Tormo is not at all representative of the normal tracks, the incredibly tight cluster of times suggest this might just be the most hotly fought season in FE history. So much so, there's probably nine teams that should realistically expect to fight for race wins in 2021.

Never have we seen a pre-season test as close as Valencia in 2020. Even ahead of the inaugural campaign in 2014-15 when all teams ran a standardised powertrain. How close was it in Spain? Just 0.578s split the whole 24-car field. And new Jaguar Racing driver Sam Bird (23rd) and Audi's Lucas di Grassi (24th) are part of those nine teams that should be in the hunt.

PLUS: How Berlin's FE finale unveiled DS Techeetah's new rivals

Quite possibly, this term will be as marginal as the ultra-competitive 2018-19 campaign - in which nine different drivers took to the top step of the podium. It's only the championship's seventh season, but the 2020-21 campaign will likely go down as a vintage campaign.

3. DS Techeetah's old car is still the yardstick

The black-and-gold benchmark of the last two seasons has taken a conservative direction. Back-to-back teams' champion DS Techeetah will delay the introduction of its new car until the Rome E-Prix in April, meaning it will wade into battle reliant on the sweeping software upgrades it has made to the four-time race-winning E-tense FE20 of last season.

A brand-new car does exist and has been tested alongside the outgoing machine in private sessions. The E-tense FE21 will debut "exciting new technology" according to Xavier Mestelan Pinon, DS's performance director. That should come as a worry to its rivals, who need to be targeting those first four races - two in Santiago and two in Diriyah - as a major opportunity to bank early points in the title race before DS Techeetah likely takes the game a step further.

While the testing times were immensely tight in Valencia, there's no indication that DS Techeetah has necessarily fallen into the clutches of the chasing pack. Da Costa went fourth fastest, team-mate Vergne was ninth. It's still the scalp that everyone else wants to claim.

Autosport wrote after da Costa's dominant win in Marrakech last season: "The long and short of it is this: if you want to assemble a fantasy FE team just now, you'd probably have Mark Preston at the helm with his McLaren, Arrows and Super Aguri F1 experience. You'd be hard-pressed to find a stronger driver combination than da Costa and Vergne. Above all, you'd pick the E-Tense FE20 as the car of choice. Ominously, DS Techeetah already has all of those assets in place."

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It's proved a winning recipe, and one that remains in place for 2020-21. Finding another 11.5s winning margin, like the one enjoyed by da Costa in Morocco, will be a big ask. But that's still a mighty fine safety net to fall back on.

4. Slipstreaming will be a big theme in 2021

There's nothing new about drafting in motorsport, but the indication is it will be rife in Formula E this season. Much like the children's nursery rhyme, the animals went round two by two in Valencia. Throughout testing, team-mates followed within inches of one another to cut through the air more cleanly to gain lap time and preserve useable energy.

Autosport reckons two inches was all that split the nosecone on Nyck de Vries' Mercedes from the diffuser of team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne's car

DS Techeetah, quickly becoming the technical benchmark in this championship, properly tried to get to grips with slipstreaming last season to varying degrees of success. Everyone else has come out of the off-season and followed suit.

Particularly during Sunday's simulation race, all teams had their drivers working in tandem. When a practice full-course yellow neutralised the field, Autosport reckons two inches was all that split the nosecone on Nyck de Vries' Mercedes from the diffuser of team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne's car.

In the overall times after the three days of running, less than 0.6 seconds separated all 24 cars. Given that Mestelan Pinon tells Autosport there's nothing akin to a silver bullet remaining under the current Gen2 regulations, drafting in group qualifying and the races might just be the next best place to find time.

5. BMW's team leader has found his swagger

Guenther cut a different figure in the paddock at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo. At 23, he remains the youngest driver in the championship. But for 2021, there's a greater weight on his shoulders as he becomes effectively the team leader for BMW Andretti. It's a role he's relishing.

He tells Autosport: "After the progress we have made, I'm really feeling good in my BMW car. We understand it, we have explored it and we can play with it. It's funny to still be the youngest but the most experienced guy in the team... at this time of the year we're trying to put everything together."

It's been a somewhat turbulent tenure for Guenther in FE. After an initial rookie test for what was then called Dragon Racing in 2017-18, the ex-FIA Formula 2 racer made his first race appearances for Jay Penske's team the following season. But on the back of a power loss and subsequent DNF in the 2019 Santiago E-Prix, the German was benched for three races to make room for Felipe Nasr. Guenther was then recalled until season's end.

When BMW Andretti had to fill the vacancy alongside Alexander Sims after da Costa moved to DS Techeetah last year, news of Guenther's signing didn't set the world alight. But he performed admirably last season with two victories and a second place. There was inconsistency, however, as no other points were scored across the 11 races.

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For the 2020-21 campaign, Sims has moved to Mahindra Racing to leave Guenther as the de facto team leader over his impressive-looking rookie team-mate Jake Dennis - the star of BMW's in-house simulator and private testing evaluation against stiff DTM competition from Philipp Eng, Marco Wittmann and Lucas Auer.

It's a lot of pressure to lead the light for such a famed manufacturer, but Guenther's shoulders have grown broader rather than buckle under the weight. There's an enhanced swagger for sure, but it's conveyed with quiet self-assurance rather than any air of arrogance.

Topping the testing times for a second year in a row after his full-power 250kW qualifying runs is a pleasing achievement in the conspicuously quiet BMW Andretti iFE21, but not hugely meaningful in the grand scheme. Nevertheless, it adds to the affable driver's growing confidence.

6. FIA World Championship status has a genuine value

'World' - it's only five letters. Granted, it means something big. But to the Formula E paddock, it means something bigger still.

The series has satisfied the FIA criteria for world championship status since its second season back in 2015-16. There's been at least four manufacturer teams and races have been held in three or more continents. It's long been fit to receive the same ranking as Formula 1, the World Endurance, World Rally and World Rallycross championships. In fact, there's a sound case to say FE is at least in the second - if not best - health of the lot, even after the news of Audi's withdrawal broke on Monday. The delay in recognition came from higher associated team entry fees.

So, FE has been operating like a world championship for some time, but actually having that official title means more to series organisers, teams and drivers than might be expected.

"When you can state at the end of the year that you're a world champion - whether that's as a team or as a driver - it's something extra special" Allan McNish

Those five letters make an enormous difference when it comes to sweet talking commercial partners. And, although it takes absolutely nothing away from the existing titles won by Nelson Piquet Jr, Sebastien Buemi, di Grassi, Vergne and da Costa, there's an added glitz to the 2020-21 crown.

As Bird explains: "It adds that extra bit of clout that this championship thoroughly deserves if you look at the driver line-up and the teams within it and the manufacturers involved and the partners."

Now Audi is quitting the championship as a factory team at the end of the year, di Grassi told Autosport he wants his second coronation to come on a 'world stage'. To the surprise of few, Audi is not going to lessen its commitment to developing its FE07 for the coming season.

Team principal Allan McNish adds: "When you can state at the end of the year that you're a world champion - whether that's as a team or as a driver - it's something extra special."

7. Dragon's ducks still aren't in a row

There's been a subtle rebrand to Dragon Penske Autosport for the 2020-21 campaign for Jay Penske's American squad. That's a surname that carries immense kudos in motorsport circles.

The squad ended last term 11th of the 12 teams, Brendon Hartley scoring the sole points finish before departing, preceding Sergio Sette Camara signing alongside 2020 DTM runner-up Nico Muller.

Both drivers showed stellar qualifying pace in the six races at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport venue last season, and certainly that one-lap speed appears to have carried over. In the combined times from the three days in Valencia, Sette Camara was second fastest and Muller third. The headlines are good, but Muller had been third fastest last year as well ahead of his point-less campaign...

The new car won't make its debut until the Rome E-Prix in April under revised homologation regulations resulting from the delays created by the pandemic. That's not necessarily a cause for concern, as it's the same route taken by reigning teams' champion DS Techeetah and Nissan e.dams.

But Muller, widely expected to get the seat, still hasn't been officially confirmed. Dragon is the last team to sort its line-up. Muller has technically only been enlisted for the test and Autosport understands he didn't take part in any of the FE TV filming on the Monday media day as a result.

There's a fresh livery and some new stickers, although both Rolling Stone and Billboard - the new logos - are part of Penske's eponymous media corporation.

There's plenty of engineering talent in the fold and a very worthy driver line-up, but the progress in the off-season doesn't appear to be on the same level as that of fellow backmarker NIO 333, which will likely close the gap to the pack after a 2019-20 season well adrift.

Dragon is comparatively modest in size to many of its FE rivals and remains committed to the championship, despite past approaches about a buyout or collaboration. But aside from the flying laps at an unrepresentative track on the east coast of Spain, there's little to suggest a marked improvement is on the horizon.

8. It's easy to steal the spotlight

It's 0930 on the Monday media day and Formula E chief championship officer Alberto Longo is sat on the left of Mahindra Racing chief executive and team principal Dilbagh Gill. The Indian car maker is about to publicly announce its six-year commitment to the series by becoming the first team to sign up to the Gen3 regulations, which pave the way for 470bhp machines and 600kW rapid charging.

But while all this is going on, there's a story bubbling away that's about to shove Mahindra out of the limelight. It's big deal so a draft of the article is already written and saved; it's now a case of waiting for greenlight so we can press send and get it online.

There's a specific request to keep questions to Vandoorne in and around the topic of FE, which is... noted. But one or two squeeze through

At 1415 that greenlight comes, Audi has gone public with the seismic news it's going to leave FE at the end of the coming season in favour of a LMDh sportscar programme and an all-electric Dakar Rally project. It marks the first time that a major manufacturer has quit the championship.

PLUS: The logic behind Audi's surprise change of course

It's not even five hours since Mahindra's good news maintained the championship's seemingly infallible appearance, but few are talking about it anymore.

Then, on Tuesday morning, Audi's no longer the hot topic. It too has been pushed to the edge of the frame for now. Lewis Hamilton has tested positive for COVID-19 and cannot participate in the Sakhir Grand Prix. As the Mercedes Formula 1 reserve driver is Vandoorne, suddenly the 2020 Berlin E-Prix winner is the most in-demand person in the paddock - even if there's a certain expectation that he won't know or be able to say anything more than 'I need to wait and see'.

Seventy-eight laps later he's out of the car and, coincidentally, part of the final-day press conference line-up. There's a specific request to keep questions in and around the topic of FE, which is... noted. But one or two squeeze through, to which Vandoorne naturally replies: "I don't know what's going to happen. I know there is a chance for me to drive, but let's wait and see."

Anyway, Audi FE driver Rene Rast is also on media duties, so the German manufacturer isn't totally out of the firing line just yet...