How an ex-F1 star "erased" his past

Motorsport careers are filled with ups and downs. Redemption, therefore, can be just one chapter in a story.

This time one year ago, the redemption chapter in one driver's tale was completed. Jean-Eric Vergne won the 2017/18 ABB FIA Formula E drivers' title for the Techeetah team, which was at that point the plucky independent underdog, taking on and beating the mighty manufacturers.

By winning that title, Vergne achieved restitution after failing in Formula 1, kicked out of the Red Bull junior programme after three seasons racing for Toro Rosso. But his story was certainly not over - and it immediately carried on into the new FE Gen2 era.

The next season brought a new look and definition for Techeetah too, as it joined forces with DS and became the manufacturer's works FE squad, although the Chinese team retained the entry.

Group testing at Valencia ahead of the new campaign suggested the pecking order had converged, with the Audi squad that had pipped Techeetah to the 2017/18 teams' championship now without the major energy-efficiency advantage it had enjoyed during the previous season.

But DS Techeetah, along with Audi (and its customer outfit Envision Virgin Racing) and testing pacesetter BMW Andretti, were generally thought to head the list of favourites going to the season opener in Saudi Arabia.

The result of that race did not provide any definitive answers on the true pecking order for the 2018/19 campaign - which, mostly thanks to the championship-order group qualifying rule, never became fully clear. But it did suggest that DS Techeetah had one of the best cars.

And because of that realisation, there was frustration at the team after the first two races. Vergne should have won the Ad Diriyah E-Prix by a comfortable margin over team-mate Andre Lotterer. And he almost certainly should have won the second race of the season in Marrakech as well. But he came away from the opening rounds with a second and a fifth.

In the first race, a regen software infringement meant both DS Techeetah cars were given drivethrough penalties, which dropped them out of the lead. In Marrakech, Vergne spun attacking Virgin's Sam Bird at the first corner from second on the grid and dropped to the rear of the field. But the searing pace he showed as he recovered suggested another easy win had gone begging.

"We started really strong," says Vergne. "Massive pace, [but] people did not react quick enough [to the Riyadh issue - DS Techeetah was fined for the same thing occurring on both its cars in practice]. Obviously, that created friction, because we don't want to have problems like these, we always want to be perfect.

"It took time for DS and Techeetah to work well together, and you realise that when you don't have good results, it's very hard because you cannot really scream at people" Jean-Eric Vergne

"Then in Marrakech, we are all a bit angry at ourselves and wanted to show that we had the pace. And it was completely my fault in Marrakech - a massive excess of confidence.

"But I think I turned around my race in Marrakech the same way I [eventually] turned around my season.

"I spun and lost a lot of energy with the spin, I'm last. But I think it was actually the best race I've ever done in Formula E. Coming from last with less energy, to fifth - and it could have been even better without the safety car at the end [for the BMW drivers colliding].

"It was good but still frustrating not winning the race because we clearly had the pace. All the bad races happened - we started on a high, [but we were] angry, we wanted to do better."

Despite the early signs of pace, there were paddock rumours early in the season that suggested things were not easy as DS and Techeetah learned to work together. Team principal Mark Preston described them as "growing pains". Vergne confirms this was the case.

"Yeah it was [growing pains]," he says. "We always knew it was going to take time, so we took the example of Audi [recovering from its early-season struggles in 2017/18], but it did not make a strong enough reaction in the minds of [some] people in our team.

"We needed to have those bad things happen to turn things around. It took time for DS and Techeetah to work well together, and you realise that when you don't have good results, it's very hard because you cannot really scream at people. You cannot point the finger at anyone. The only thing that you have to do is pull everybody together and have fun."

But this took time. And, after the disappointment of missing out on those early wins, things did not get better as the first half of the season wore on.

In Santiago, where scorching 40C heat turned the race into a battery temperature-limited affair, the impact of the new group qualifying rule fully emerged. And it was Vergne who was the highest-profile casualty. Although none of the group-one runners made it through to superpole for that race, he topped group one with a clear margin.

But the significant track evolution caused by the temperature and the tricky surface (leaves and dust from the track's park setting gave the later-running groups a major advantage) meant he started down in 12th on the grid.

That resulted in contact in the mid-pack chaos and a first FE retirement since Paris in 2016/17. And it was a similar story in Mexico City, where contact with the Jaguar drivers left him 13th, a result he repeated in Hong Kong.

The fifth event of the season had been a disaster for Vergne. He was visibly struggling with the handling of his car in the early practice sessions, then crashed and caused a red flag in qualifying.

While Vergne ran in the pack in the race, getting involved in more contact, Lotterer was leading from the front and would probably have won had it not been for late contact with Bird.

A post-race investigation revealed that Vergne's car was damaged. But he feels it was not just a physical issue that needed fixing.

"First of all it was to find the issue and to fight some people in the team that [had] started to think I was probably not good anymore," he explains. "It's hard because people are expecting you to deliver. And when you don't deliver because of external factors, people that are quite high up, they just look at the results. They don't care about looking for what's the reason.

"It kind of happened a little bit - I had some talks with people trying to help me like you would help a driver that has lost motivation or that has lost it. I've never lost it and I'm more motivated than ever. I hate losing more than I like winning. So, when things don't go the right way for me, I'm ready to ask everything to find a solution, and to be better at the next race."

On his feelings after Hong Kong, he adds: "When you have the momentum like this [run] of bad races, this is when I thought was clearly the most difficult moment in the season. When you have so many bad races, it's extremely hard to turn things around quickly to save your season. I was nowhere in the championship - I was maybe 20-30 points behind. I had to reset everything, and do massive work on myself and with the team."

That work paid off handsomely at the next round. With his car repaired, Vergne qualified second at Sanya and beat Nissan e.dams driver Oliver Rowland to the win with a daring pass late in the race after lulling his rival into a false sense of security at the final corner.

"He's one of the best drivers I've ever worked with. He's the true champion, and he deserves it, he's awesome" Mark Preston

There were a few more blips in Rome and Paris as FE's sensational success-spread (eight different winners in the first eight races) played out thanks to the group qualifying rule change. But the season's final third was all about Vergne.

Two key moments came in qualifying in Monaco and Bern. Both tracks were almost impossible to pass at - although there were indeed some impressive moves pulled off, as well as plenty of regrettable contact. But all of that came in Vergne's wake as he crucially took pole for both events, so confident he'd be able to stay ahead in the races that he paid less attention to tactics and focussed on single-lap preparation.

"In Monaco, I did some race simulation, but the sim prep work I mainly did qualifying prep," he explains. "For Bern, I'd not done a single race simulation, only qualifying, because I knew even if you had a good race pace, [it's no good] if you start from 15th - you're never going to win that race.

"Due to the nature of the track, I knew that everything was to play for in qualifying. That's why I was struggling a bit in that race, but I didn't care. I was very confident. If there was one thing I've learned in Formula E, it's how to defend."

Vergne's success in Monaco and Bern - as well as his third place between those events in Berlin - was so important because it came just as his closest rival at that stage, Audi's Lucas di Grassi, suffered disasters and haemorrhaged points.

He arrived at the New York double-header season finale with a massive 32-point buffer, which meant he was still favourite to take the title even after his shocking first race - where his involvement in two pile-ups left him down in 15th.

His infamous radio messages during the New York event - where he twice asked DS Techeetah to tell Lotterer to stop on track and trigger the safety car - did take some of the shine off his title. But it should not diminish his campaign overall.

"He's one of the best drivers I've ever worked with," says team boss Mark Preston. "He's the true champion, and he deserves it, he's awesome.

"It's been a whole different dynamic this year - we're working with DS, and there's a bigger team, doing a lot more testing [as a works squad]. It's been a whole different world, a whole different championship. Different, but JEV's been pushing the whole time."

Vergne is committed to DS Techeetah for at least one more season, with his latest contract being announced at the first race back in December. But he will go into the 2019/20 championship with a new sidekick, as Lotterer has left the team to race for the incoming Porsche squad.

And alongside the sportscar giant comes Mercedes - the dominant force in grand prix racing for most of the past decade. There is already much paddock paranoia about the impact of the impending arrival of these teams, particularly in relation to budgets and resources such as potential remote garage 'mission control' set-ups. But Vergne says none of that matters to him.

"I had talks before I signed my contract here, and I believe that Techeetah is the best team to be in for the next few years," he explains.

"I don't think Porsche or Mercedes will come and kick our asses. I look at Audi - Audi, to me, is the best brand in motor racing. They've won everything they've done. Fantastic facility, brilliant people.

"They won Le Mans so many times. They have this DNA that not many other teams have in the world of motorsport. The fact that they have been here [in FE] from the very beginning, [with the] biggest budget more or less, and that us, DS Techeetah, are able to beat this team tells me that I'm not very afraid of Mercedes or Porsche.

"I don't think Mercedes or Porsche will do much better than Audi, because they don't have the experience. They may have the budget, they may take the best engineers, but everything takes time. So I think I'm in the perfect position for the moment."

So, the next chapter in Vergne's tale has been set out: he'll lead DS Techeetah into battle against FE's gigantic new arrivals. And the follow-up to his redemption episode has also been completed with his second title. He feels his story has indeed now been rewritten after the disappointing end to his F1 days.

Extending DS Techeetah's dynasty of success into a third season - new territory for an FE team - will be Vergne's true target for 2019/20

"I think I've erased my past," he says. "In the way that I've always had the image of a fast driver but not a complete [one], which was true.

"Today, I think I'm a lot more complete - that probably makes me even faster because my mind is a lot clearer in what I need to do.

"I've achieved what I wanted to achieve thanks to Formula E. Then, of course, I want more titles, more success - I want to write the history of the sport because it's a massively growing championship.

"But if I had the opportunity to go back into F1, I would strongly consider it because I think I have what it takes to now succeed in F1. But I would only go if it's a top team.

"All the young drivers who are going into F1 with midfield teams, [which] is understandable, it's really good for them. They have time to prove themselves and be picked by a top team. I don't have this time anymore.

"There are specific agendas in Formula 1 that I am aware of, so it's not something I think of. But I know that if the opportunity comes then I will strongly consider it, because I think I now have the right tools to do well in F1, which I didn't [before].

But assuming that achieving further FE success is the goal for the next chapter in Vergne's career - with possible sportscar competition not ruled out after another near-miss at Le Mans in LMP2 this year with the G-Drive team - he will be looking at making further history.

By winning the 2018/19 championship he became FE's first double champion, and the first driver to successfully defend a title - even if his mantra all year was about winning a new crown, not defending one that cannot be taken off him. He also helped DS Techeetah take the teams' prize, matching Renault e.dams' achievement of claiming both titles from the 2015/16 campaign.

That team was the major force of FE's opening years, once the all-spec formula of its opening season had been passed by. But Renault faded after two dominant championships, with Techeetah (in both its privateer and works iteration) surpassing it as arguably FE's preeminent squad.

Extending that dynasty of success into a third season - new territory for an FE team - will be Vergne's true target for his next chapter.