How Mercedes and Porsche can avoid a difficult second FE album

Mercedes and Porsche compete to win and have done so across the board: in Formula 1, sportscars, the Dakar Rally and endurance road races - even working together to break land speed records. Next in the crosshairs is the Formula E teams' championship crown.

Success coming decade after decade hasn't allowed delusions of grandeur to creep in. Complacency doesn't take a manufacturer to the top, nor does it keep it there. But, owing to their accomplishments, there's an expectation from spectators and the boardroom that they will deliver the goods in the electric series, despite the relative youth of both programmes.

The two German titans share a common goal ahead of the 2021 campaign, their second in FE. Both are gunning to topple incumbent king DS Techeetah to win the teams' crown. This target has been placed knowing just how hotly contested FE is, that consistency and incremental gains - rather than silver bullets - are the keys to a sustained title push.

Mercedes enters the new campaign with its house in order. It retains drivers Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries after his starring rookie season. It hasn't made sweeping personnel or structural changes, either. That will come next season when, as a clue of its imminently expected commitment to the series for the arrival of the Gen3 rules, it will consolidate around its Brackley base. For now, however, the set-up is a touch convoluted.

The FE concern is split across five locations in two countries. The Brackley headquarters leads the way, with the power unit developed and manufactured at the Brixworth High Performance Powertrains site, which has cultivated so much of its recent F1 success. The race team and operations are predominantly based in Affalterbach, home of AMG.

Team principal Ian James explains the plan to Autosport: "We need to do a restructure. We're [currently] structured in a way to make the most of that expertise.

"That's got us up and running but looking to mid- to long-term, if we're going to remain competitive then we need to maximise our efficiency as well. We can't do that when we're split over all those locations. That's part of the reason why we want to consolidate in the UK."

The more streamlined set-up will come for next season but, for now, the goal is to pick up from where Mercedes ended the 2019-20 campaign. In the final Berlin race, polesitter Vandoorne led in comfort as de Vries progressed from fourth to deliver a 1-2 finish. It was a commanding maiden victory.

Mercedes has introduced a new car from the kick-off of 2021, having opted for the first of three homologation windows, and the Silver Arrow 02 looks to build on the solid foundations laid by its predecessor. Aping the tactics that have borne so much fruit for the marque in F1, and recognising the requirements for success in FE, there's not been a clean sheet of paper.

"We haven't fallen into the trap of thinking we've suddenly turned a corner and cracked it and we've got it made. Quite the opposite, we know actually how precarious the situation can be" Ian James

"Conceptually, it's an evolution," James says of the new car. "But there isn't really any component part we haven't touched, redesigned and gone at again."

Opting for evolution over revolution is not to say that Mercedes is totally risk-averse in its bid to win the title. The repurposing of Brixworth to manufacturer breathing aids during the first peak of the pandemic resulted in a "100%" shutdown of the FE team. Had the calendar kept to the previous late November/early December starts, rather than shift to an opening round in late February, the old powertrain wouldn't have been put out to pasture quite so soon.

"There was a lot of discussion when the COVID pandemic struck about how we were going to approach that," adds James. "But we had that postponement at the start of the season. We looked at each other in the whites of the eyes and said 'what do we really want to start with?'

The team took a "massive risk" when it answered that question, meaning Mercedes will bring the updated powertrain for the opening Saudi Arabia double-header night race, site of its promising start to life in FE. Last year, in the two Diriyah E-Prix, Vandoorne bagged a brace of podiums. Positive headlines were made early doors, but neither the Belgian nor de Vries would visit the rostrum again until that final-hour 1-2 in the German capital.

One season of the HWA Racelab forerunner notwithstanding, it was a debut campaign that returned a superb third in the constructors' chart. But it was frequently tinged by operational and reliability errors. While the Berlin madness permitted Vandoorne to leap from ninth to finish a somewhat fortunate runner-up to champion Antonio Felix da Costa, de Vries was a lowly 11th. That did a great deal to mask his competitiveness. The 2019 FIA Formula 2 champion was quick on all counts and spectacular to watch in wheel-to-wheel combat.

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James says of his driver: "Nyck had the speed, that balance between aggression and control. He's very much the complete package. He had a great rookie year, he had the brunt of the bad luck and, speaking honestly, the operational errors that we made at certain times as well.

"If you take that out of the equation, he could have been a lot further up the field. He showed the potential. What we need to do now is make sure we give him the consistency that will enable him to show really what he's capable of."

Of the 11 races last season, points were notably lost on no fewer than five occasions. De Vries copped 29 seconds' worth of penalties in the second Saudi race. A podium next time out in Santiago was lost to a five-second reprimand after Mercedes overcooled his car's battery on the grid.

There was also a bizarre front-axle braking issue in Mexico City when he activated fanboost. In his battle with da Costa for fifth, he locked up massively on the approach to Turn 1 and collected a blameless Robin Frijns. Then, a power overspike occurred in the following Marrakech race. And, in the second Berlin round, there was a full car shutdown just as he was about to engage attack mode in his fight for fifth.

De Vries brushes off any sentiment of being let down but does concede: "At the end of the day we're a team, we're in this together. It was our first season together so it's part of our sport. Of course, when I look back and you start to count the points it's like 'oh f***', but everyone in the paddock will have situations like that. The only thing you can do is learn from your mistakes and move forward."

Some of the mistakes were down to the drivers, but many weren't. Vandoorne also had his misfortune. Entering Mexico City, he was leading the championship. But three laps from home, while running in fifth, he shunted into the wall. Even now he calls it "stupid", having thrown away good points. A very subdued outing in Marrakech was later attributed to a software issue, while a puncture sent him for an early bath in the third Berlin contest.

"We haven't fallen into the trap of thinking we've suddenly turned a corner and cracked it and we've got it made," says James as he reflects on the Berlin 1-2. "Quite the opposite, we know actually how precarious the situation can be. We just need to be now focusing on being operationally excellent as we go into our second season.

"We've got a robust process in place in terms of how we deal with faults, be they technical faults or operational errors and how we then contain them. We talk a lot within Mercedes-Benz Motorsport as a whole about this 'no blame' culture. That's crucially important because that gives people the opportunity to talk very honestly about what's happened without the fear of reprisal. It enables us to get to the route of the problem and then make sure it doesn't happen again.

"Our rookie year is now behind us. We cannot make errors twice, that's clear. We're still going to be learning but the operational excellence and the precision that's required in Formula E is of paramount importance. We're confident the package we've got is strong. If we can eliminate those errors, then we'll put ourselves in a good position."

"What we've really worked on for season seven is to be consistently up there. The ups and downs we had last year - we need to smoothen it out" Amiel Lindesay

If those errors can be eliminated, there's an incredibly solid platform upon which to develop. For one, Mercedes was the shootout king. De Vries made it through to superpole on seven occasions, Vandoorne three times. Only Nissan e.dams could match that tally, while the DS Techeetah pair were on eight. Combine that one-lap potency with improved reliability and fewer mistakes in the race, which will come with experience, and suddenly Merc's reach for the title isn't too far beyond its grasp.

Comparatively, Porsche - also on the cusp of signing up to the Gen3 rules - has further to climb to claim the trophy, having finished eighth last term. But the intention from head of FE operations Amiel Lindesay is clear.

Asked about his targets for the season to come, he tells Autosport it's "to win the championship. The podium was the target [in 2019-20] - next year we expect to have a car and team that can win races and contend for the championship." That's far from being a flight of fantasy from the former Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 crew chief.

To deliver, former BMW chief mechanic James Lindesay has come in as team manager, with his brother Amiel having covered that role in addition to his own last season. Most notably, ex-F1 driver Pascal Wehrlein has been recruited to replace Neel Jani.

A champion of A1GP, the World Endurance Championship and winner of Le Mans in 2016, Jani can feel more than a touch aggrieved to have been dropped. He was blighted by issues of oversteer on corner entry until a shunt with Sergio Sette Camara resulted in a new monocoque for the final two races of last season. The improvement from then on was marked but too late.

The Volkswagen Group is loyal to its own. With the cancellation of the LMP1 projects from Audi and Porsche, many of its drivers were rehomed. Timo Bernhard was chosen to smash the Nurburgring Nordschleife lap record aboard the 919 Hybrid Evo. Romain Dumas was kept to lead the Volkswagen ID.R programme. Loic Duval was sent into DTM battle with Audi.

For the new season, however, it's opted for fresh blood and moved to tie Wehrlein down early. That meant the German's position at Mahindra Racing became untenable in the eyes of team principal Dilbagh Gill and he was dropped for the six races in Berlin.

Alongside the incumbent Andre Lotterer, neither driver nor the team has won a race in FE so far - although Wehrlein came desperately close in Mexico City in 2019. Ex-DS Techeetah driver Lotterer, too, should be off the mark having scored Porsche its first pole at the same venue last year. He was also on his way to the top step in Hong Kong in 2019 but for a puncture dealt by Sam Bird. Porsche, Lotterer and Wehrlein all need to shake that monkey off their back in 2021.

Similar to Mercedes, the one-lap speed is on the money. But Porsche doesn't have the season's worth of data accrued by HWA Racelab to fall back on in its bid to gain more race experience. That means for the first half of the 2021 calendar alone, it goes to Rome and Monaco with very few points of reference.

Amiel Lindesay says: "What we've really worked on for season seven is to be consistently up there. The ups and downs we had last year - we need to smoothen it out. Although that seems a bit of a trend [throughout the grid] apart from one team which won the championship [DS Techeetah].

"You can't change the world in a day. We're still learning. The learning curve is steep. Every race we gain experience. It would have been nice last year to have more races. There's still tracks we're going to we've never been to before."

In a bid to address this, during private manufacturer tests, Porsche has visited a variety of tracks to mimic real-world FE corners better than the unrepresentative nature of the Valencia official pre-season testing venue. With Lotterer scoring a second place on Porsche's debut in Saudi and equalling that result in the first Berlin race, it seems only a matter of time before this leviathan of motorsport will win in its latest conquest.

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The noise coming out of both Mercedes and Porsche camps is positive for the season ahead as they seek to find a consistent footing at the front of the pack. That's offset to a degree by how difficult it is to dominate in this championship, with da Costa's crown last season - wrapped up with two races to spare - the exception rather than the rule of FE, helped by the skewed calendar. DS Techeetah is still the scalp to claim, while BMW, Jaguar and Audi will all come out fighting with new cars from the start after tepid ends to last season.

Make no mistake, Mercedes and Porsche are on course for that so-called difficult second album in a field that's as competitive, if not more so, than any other in racing. Pre-season testing revealed a 24-car grid split by only 0.8 seconds.

In a competition that tight, the key to success in FE, which is far easier said than done, is to make the bad days fewer and farther between. Working on race pace will aid that mission for both as they look to add the FE teams' title to two glittering motorsport track records.