Is Jaguar Formula E's worst team?

Formula E is tough. Jaguar knew that, and duly played down expectations ahead of its debut last month. But perhaps the reality of how tough its return to major international motorsport is going to be is now sinking in. Two races into the electric single-seater series' 2016/17 season, the British manufacturer looks a fair way from scoring its first points.

Jaguar knew it wasn't going to set the world alight this season, even though there are plenty who think ample resources and a tie-up with Williams Advanced Engineering - the series' spec battery supplier - mean it should be making a more immediate impact. There's no denying both those elements will be advantageous, but it's more likely to be impactful in the long-term.

In the short-term, Jaguar's introduction to FE has been underwhelming. A best qualifying result of 14th (1.3 seconds off the pace) and race result of 12th (43s off the winner) - both of which came on its debut in Hong Kong - leave a lot to be desired.

Jaguar's nowhere on one-lap pace at the moment. The most accurate way to analyse this is using the 'supertime' methodology, where the single best lap time of each race event is expressed as 100% and every team is compared to that.

Renault e.dams has had the best performance across the two rounds so far with a supertime of 100.141% - then there's a pretty close spread covering the next seven teams. Jaguar stands a distant last in the table at 102.43%, a chunk off the next-slowest team (Venturi) and some way from the benchmark. It's also considerably further away than the performance of last season's worst package, which was NextEV at 101.563% through 2015/16.

SUPERTIMES AFTER TWO RACES
1 Renault e.dams 100.141%
2 Techeetah 100.244%
3 Mahindra 100.527%
4 Abt Audi Sport 100.636%
5 DS Virgin 100.792%
6 NextEV 101.130%
7 Andretti 101.219%
8 Faraday Future/Dragon 101.296%
9 Venturi 101.721%
10 Jaguar 102.428%

Jaguar's I-type 1 is not the perfect powertrain; it uses the season-one longitudinal motor layout and a top-mounted inverter that's not ideal for centre of gravity, and a two-speed gearbox in aluminium casing that means it's a bit on the heavy side. It is a compromised package.

But Jaguar reckons there is a second reason for its poor one-lap pace: with the exception of Adam Carroll's engineer Patrick Coorey, it has no experience of running Formula E cars on a race weekend. Team director James Barclay believes that a lack of set-up knowledge and the inexperience of its rookie driver line-up means even if its powertrain has a lower ultimate peak than its rivals, the team is some way from reaching that maximum anyway.

"We're learning this car," says Barclay. "We have a good, nice race balance but that qualifying sweet spot - when you're changing various settings to optimise that and getting the balance just right - is very tricky.

"We don't have that sweet spot and getting to that and making the car very easy to really lean on [is critical].

"We're not necessarily fulfilling our potential in qualifying and if you don't have that track position [for the race] it's really difficult. It really puts you on the back foot."

That's the bad news. The good news is it is reasonable to expect, with more experience from the team and drivers Carroll and Mitch Evans, Jaguar will improve its qualifying performances as the season progresses. With eight events remaining any talk of it becoming the first team in FE history to fail to score a point is premature at the moment, but fail to address the qualifying shortfall and that prospect becomes a bit more realistic.

Not being confident or aggressive with set-up/strategy in practice has a knock-on effect to qualifying. In fact Formula E's single-day format and minimal track time punishes conservatism/inexperience/lack of preparation (whichever you want to apply to Jaguar) quite heavily.

The main thing Jaguar needs to do is start races further up the grid, because its race pace is not quite as problematic as its qualifying performance.

RACE PACE
(Average based on 10 fastest race laps from each ePrix)
1 DS Virgin +0.18s
2 Renault e.dams +0.37s
3 Andretti +0.64s
4 NextEV +0.80s
5 Abt Audi Sport +0.82s
6 Venturi +0.87s
7 Techeetah +0.94s
8 Mahindra +0.95
9 Jaguar +1.14s
10 Faraday Future/Dragon +1.36s

Jaguar still languishes at the wrong end of the order in this comparison, but the outlook is at least more promising.

Taking an average of the 10 fastest lap times from the opening two races is a slightly tricky point of reference, because in Hong Kong an early safety car split the field in two in terms of strategy. That means you had several cars on an energy conservation drive for more than half the race, and others that were able to push a lot harder. But it is the only data to go on so far, and what it suggests is that Jaguar is on the fringes of a fierce midfield battle.

Jaguar is a couple of tenths adrift of that group and the same distance clear of the Faraday Future-backed Dragon Racing team, which has fallen far from its perch as the third-fastest team in the 2015/16 series. In terms of executing its races, Jaguar looks sharper and its energy management has been solid.

Reliability has looked reasonable (Evans being unable to finish the Hong Kong race aside) but more needs to come from each driver - Carroll erred in qualifying in Marrakech, while Evans had a penultimate-lap off in the race.

Both Carroll and Evans looked unhappier after the Moroccan race than in Hong Kong, complaining that it was difficult to stay with the drivers in front, but the team is not cut adrift in the races in the same way it seems to be in qualifying.

"After two races we're doing a solid job operationally, we've made some really good improvements," insists Barclay. "The guys were frustrated with themselves not optimising everything fully [in Marrakech] and we were frustrated when we saw things we would do differently but that is part of that process.

"The good thing is if there wasn't that element of drive and wanting to do better, if we're satisfied with where we are, it wouldn't be right."

Fixing that qualifying deficit is the key, even though it's a lot easier said than done. Formula E has an incredible quirk of being a street circuit championship that isn't ultimately determined by qualifying at the front. But because it's become intensely competitive this season, particularly in the midfield, it is still very difficult to recover ground if you're not one of the leading three or four teams.

There is a long time between now and the next race in Buenos Aires in late February, and though the cars need to be freighted before Christmas the teams have plenty of time to analyse data and work on potential solutions.

That leaves Jaguar optimistic that it does not need to treat this campaign as a write-off.

"Next season we know we'll be in a stronger position - but with the car we've got we can still get some strong results," says Barclay. "Without doubt the bigger results will be next year but we want to be pushing and finding those opportunities to ultimately surprise hopefully later in the year."

AUTOSPORT'S EARLY SEASON RANKING
(Pecking order based on qualifying and race performance)
1 Renault e.dams
2 DS Virgin
3 Abt Audi Sport
4 Techeetah
5 Mahindra
6 Andretti
7 NextEV
8 Venturi
9 Dragon/Faraday
10 Jaguar

Going back to the comparison of supertimes and average lap times in the races, what's clear about the pecking order is it's more competitive this season.

While DS Virgin tops the 'race pace' chart, that is skewed by Sam Bird's aggressive second stint in Hong Kong, which took place alongside an energy-conservation from Renault's Sebastien Buemi. There are also outliers like Jean-Eric Vergne's two races being disastrous in comparison to his practice and qualifying pace.

However, the Renault and DS Virgin Racing powertrains appear to have the edge at this stage. That means Renault customer Techeetah will be in that same performance band once it stops making life difficult for itself - the disparity between its raw speed and race pace in the first two events shows exactly where the Chinese-owned team is lacking.

The obvious early conclusion to draw is Renault and Buemi are looking an incredibly formidable package. In Marrakech, Buemi saved more energy than anyone else on the same strategy and his pace was very impressive - his average across his five best laps was more than half a second quicker than the next best, his advantage over the best 10 laps was 0.355s and over 20 laps it was 0.265s.

Buemi's advantage over Lucas di Grassi in the championship is now 22 points, as large as it was at any stage last season, but with the caveat that Buemi's driving better than and, more crucially, di Grassi and Abt are not clearly the second-quickest combination any more.

Di Grassi has never scored a pole in FE and only qualified on the first row twice last year, but he won four races on the road (eventually being penalised post-race in Mexico) and bagged four other podiums. He drove exceptionally well, but with a package that was second only to Renault.

The early indication is Abt has slipped behind DS in the pecking order, while Techeetah's Renault customer status puts another car (no disrespect to Ma Qing Hua) in the mix as well. If that continues to be the case di Grassi will find making up ground difficult.

That's especially the case as the likes of Mahindra, NextEV and Andretti are putting themselves in the mix with different strengths. The Mahindra M3ELECTRO and NextEV TCR002 are big steps forward from their predecessors. Both teams have performed extremely well in qualifying, with Mahindra netting two podiums despite not necessarily having the out-and-out speed in the race of its rivals.

NextEV is also putting itself in the mix off the back of its qualifying performances, while Andretti is doing the opposite - qualifying solidly and, with Antonio Felix da Costa and Robin Frijns, doing even better in the races.

Of the other contenders Venturi is executing its races well despite a performance shortfall over one lap, while Dragon/Faraday has slipped from the third-best performing team to duking it out with Jaguar at the rear of the field. Messy races and reliability issues have probably prevented Jerome d'Ambrosio and Loic Duval from really showing what that new partnership is capable of.

That also means that while Jaguar can improve its own performance as the season goes on, it will only haul itself into that midfield battle - it is unlikely to vault into the top 10 immediately. The bottom line is even though Buemi has won the first two races, the pre-season suggestion that things would be more competitive between the teams in 2016/17 looks accurate.

Jaguar's role in the story of the season may be playing out differently to how some expected, but it's still a key character. What's encouraging for the remainder of the campaign is the big cat's turning out to be just one of many fascinating sub-plots.