How Mercedes's Formula E squad replicated the F1 team's best trait

The Mercedes-EQ Formula E team is such a young entity. But one of the advantages we had from the off was our connections with the wider Mercedes motorsport family – with the grand prix team, High Performance Powertrains at Brixworth and HWA coming out of the DTM. It was perfect because you could cherry pick the best bits and bring it all together.

When the personnel were chosen, we took everybody down to Lake Constance on the German-Austrian border for a couple of days. We focused on what it meant to be a team and what we wanted to achieve, so everybody had a clear understanding of the common goal.

It was fascinating to see how people were genuinely feeling part of one team rather than feeling part of the entities that they’d come from. That was a real key moment that started us on this journey. It was the clarity of the goals and giving everyone some psychological safety. They knew they could move forward as a member of this team with the backing and support of their colleagues.

One of the really powerful exercises we did was to understand what your character traits are – both good and bad – and how that works together with your colleagues. Actually, what you shouldn’t necessarily do in certain situations is look to just align with people who are very similar to you. Instead, find somebody that has the opposite traits. That provides a different perspective. Once you understand that, you can forge those relationships within the team that work together very well.

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Then there’s the other famous thing that’s always spoken about within the Mercedes motorsport teams. We have this ‘no blame’ culture. It gives people the opportunity to know that they can push the boundaries and they can make mistakes. But there will be no fear of recrimination. It’s as simple as that.

Champion Nyck de Vries, Mercedes-Benz EQ, Ian James, Team Principal, Mercedes-Benz EQ, celebrate

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

On our way to the 2021 Formula E teams’ title, we did go through a mid-season dip in form. A lot of the reasons for this were of our own making. Although we started the season strongly, we knew we needed to continue pushing forward to have a chance of putting ourselves towards the top of the table. When we stuttered, we needed to take a step back and analyse why it was happening. It took a lot of work and time to realise that actually us being more aggressive in terms of chasing performance, especially in qualifying, was doing more harm than good. We were pushing too far in the wrong areas.

We had the confidence to wind that back to reset to where we’d been before and then use other performance differentiators to push forward again. That’s where we saw that we were able to come out of that dip and then regain the performance, which was crucial for the championship win. It’s only through having that rigour and that discipline that you’re able to really unpick where things are going wrong.

I look back to when I had my first foray into motorsport at HPP. In F1, we came out of the box in 2014 and we knew we had a pretty special powertrain on our hands. It struck me as a real sort of eureka moment when I realised that the euphoria you feel on the Sunday is tempered so quickly on the Monday morning when you’re no longer focusing on the win. You’re straight back into ‘OK, what went wrong?’

"It took a lot of work and time to realise that being more aggressive in chasing performance was doing more harm than good. We were pushing too far in the wrong areas" Ian James

I remember sitting there and one of the first meetings that I took part in, virtually nobody was talking about the win after 30 seconds. We went back into this almost self-berating mode of focusing on the things that didn’t go as planned that could in future develop into bigger issues. We’ve had the same approach now with the Formula E team.

Everybody plays a role in those successes. But you can’t get carried away. You have to realise that the next race is going to throw up the next challenge and you need to be super-clear on progressing.

Formula E is a series designed to punish mistakes and there is no room for laziness or arrogance in any way, shape or form. As soon as you relax just a little bit then you’ll start to fall backwards. But that’s part of the beauty of the sport as well. It’s what makes it exciting.

Nyck de Vries, Mercedes-Benz EQ, EQ Silver Arrow 02

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Motorsport Images