Why Audi has to treat Formula E like Le Mans

Winning at the slowest possible speed is an old racing philosophy espoused to great effect by Alain Prost in his Formula 1-conquering days, so there's some irony in how last season he watched a Formula E rival put it into practice.

The Renault Z.E.15 was the pick of the powertrains in the first season of open motor/gearbox/inverter competition, and the evolutionary Z.E.16 kept the Prost/Jean-Paul Driot-run Renault e.dams team atop the pack in performance terms. But Lucas di Grassi and Abt Audi Sport, with a sprinkling more Audi assistance than before, managed to steal the title at the final round... despite being slower throughout most of the season.

That's not the sort of winning at the slowest possible speed Prost would have had in mind, but it was unlikely to happen twice. That's why Audi had to get involved properly. And that's not a subjective view - that's straight from the top of the Audi motorsport tree.

"Obviously matching Renault is the target," explains Audi motorsport boss Dieter Gass. "This is one of the reasons we have taken over."

So, the name above the (drivers') championship-winning door has changed. Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport becomes Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler. The deference to the operating team and its technical partner remains, but the might of the four rings gets top priority.

Audi is entering FE all guns blazing before rival German marques BMW, Mercedes and Porsche join the fray. This is about sending a commercial message, but it's also about getting a competitive edge. Having withdrawn from the World Endurance Championship, Audi has redirected elements of its LMP1 resources to the new FE project.

"In LMP1 you had more people, more time on track. In FE you have to be more precise" Lucas di Grassi

"We have integrated some people but I have to admit we did lose some as well," explains Gass. "Not so much to competition in motorsport but to technical road car development departments [within Audi].

"I think the LMP1 experience is beneficial in many concerns. We have seen in the development of the new car, of the new MGU, of the software, that you can use plenty of things you did learn in WEC.

"We see it also on the driver side - Lucas from his WEC experience. He was a small step ahead of those lacking that. If you see the other very strong drivers in the championship it's somebody who has WEC experience."

Renault has openly admitted that it has used the expertise of its Formula 1-employed engineers to improve its FE package. Now Audi hopes its LMP1 history will have the same effect.

New FE team principal Allan McNish has witnessed the might of Audi's LMP1 investment from a driver's perspective and in a team role.

"Oh no question [it's an advantage]," he says. "This is the first time Audi has been in fully electric mode, but since 2002 they've been working on hybrids. It's new in this category, but it's not new.

"There's a lot of experience there. It's one of the things we'll be calling on. It's always a moving target, Renault's the target principally, but I always prefer to have that experience in my pocket."

Di Grassi has been reunited with engineering staff he worked with as an Audi LMP1 driver until the end of last year. He says Audi has integrated the right people and is also pleased that Abt remains the operating partner, because that removes a variable.

Had Audi opted to compose an entirely new team, the hurdle would have been even greater. Instead it has stuck to the same philosophy that has served it so well at Le Mans (employing Joest to run the cars) and in the DTM (where Audi Sport engineering is operated by professional teams - including Abt).

"They are very good and I'm very happy they are joining the programme," says di Grassi of the Audi additions. "They have to get up to the format - in LMP1 you had more people, more time on track, more testing. In FE you have to do stuff more precisely, more efficiently."

So, what changes? At the race track Daniel Abt will take on Nico Muller's DTM engineer Daniel Gundwald, while a couple of data engineers have also been swapped in. Apart from that, "there's not so much change in the race team", says Gass. Still, he confidently predicts Audi's other input will help Abt make "a significant step forward".

"The people working at the track are mainly Abt people, we then do support on the engineering level in the first place," he explains. "In terms of development we still have the collaboration with Schaeffler. On the racing side, we will supply increased engineering to the track, but from the outside you won't notice much change."

McNish, a three-time Le Mans winner, is one of the most obvious examples of change.

"In principle it's additional support at the circuit and more behind-the-scenes engineering," McNish says. "It's headed by Audi but Schaeffler are still the technical partner.

"It's tricky because you've got to keep the key ingredients as much as you can. The drivers are one of them. Daniel developed very well at the end of last season and Lucas is clearly the most experienced of anyone in the category.

"But the way Abt has been consistently able to get a car that hasn't got the support of some of the others [to succeed], there's a huge incentive to keep them."

The first day of pre-season testing was the first time Abt had worked with his new race engineer, just one of the small things the new works operation is having to work around before Hong Kong. But Abt, now a works Audi driver, says he is "very pleased" by what he's seen now it's a proper programme.

"It was a bit of a task because we had a new complexity with new team members," he says.

"I would lie if I said we had no issues, it's always a big task when you start from scratch. It's a bit difficult to have everyone on the same page. But we grew together and what we've done so far is good."

This is a familiar theme when speaking to those within the set-up. There's a challenge, especially at first, to make sure the 'takeover' of responsibility on Audi's side, and the influx of Audi people, is managed correctly.

"Audi inherited a championship-winning car and driver so expectations are high" Lucas di Grassi

"One thing is giving Audi a wishlist and getting the stuff done, the other thing is getting the stuff done and getting an advantage out of it," says di Grassi. "That's the tricky part. I think we did a lot of work.

"We are in a position much better than we finished last season, with hardware, software, every aspect of the car. But there is a difficulty which is the transition phase. A lot of the engineers are new, a lot of the stuff needs to work to gain performance.

"This is the transition that will also be my task, to make sure every engineer is up to speed. We already did a step forward but in the season we will make it work in a more smooth way. The challenge is to make complex things run smoothly.

"The step is only enough if the others haven't done much. If the others made a bigger step, we're on the backfoot. We'll have an idea after Valencia, but we'll only know in Hong Kong."

Audi's success in LMP1 is proof that the potential of the programme is huge. Bigger technical resources are a huge plus, even if FE's powertrain investment is still limited to motor, inverter and gearbox - Gass jokes that "if the costs will explode I would be afraid about the championship being able to continue, but at the same time being a manufacturer involved I would love to develop everything!"

With that extra commitment, though, comes extra expectation and pressure.

"Racing is always pressure," counters di Grassi. "Every time you have a huge pressure to win the championship - then you have more pressure to keep it.

"We are in a good position. Audi inherited a championship-winning car and driver so expectations are high. But the mindset is exactly the same. We go there trying to win every race.

"The championship will be much closer this season. Everyone is evolving but the bottom guys are evolving quicker. Everything will get compressed."

That is why Audi had to give Formula E the LMP1 treatment. There are those who view the electric single-seater series as an uncompetitive proposition, a lower-cost, lower-tech version of what racing should really be like. If anyone within the series took that view they would get caught with their trousers round their ankles, and Audi isn't one to make such a mistake.

Its car may bear the #1 this season, but Audi knows it doesn't come into Formula E as an automatic alpha male. Given there will be even more contenders for that role in the very near future, throwing everything it has at FE was the only option if Audi wants to succeed.