The clues that point to Porsche and Mercedes' FE positioning

In just six years, Formula E has managed to do something that Formula 1 hasn't been able to in its near-70-year lifetime so far.

As Mercedes and Porsche join FE's ranks, four of Germany's biggest automotive manufacturers will be represented on the same single-seater grid for the first time.

Naturally, FE is keen to milk that for all its worth, and in the championship's first press conference of the year at Valencia last week, Mercedes team principal Ian James and Porsche team manager Amiel Lindesay joined Audi and BMW Andretti team bosses Allan McNish and Roger Griffiths behind the table.

Audi and BMW are well-established teams, and it's now the turn of FE's "newbies" to prove themselves on the grid. The Mercedes and Porsche names are much-heralded in global motorsport, with trophy cabinets packed to the rafters with silverware, but both will join FE without any category history to fall back on.

But these will not be identikit manufacturer teams, for the two will make their FE debuts in very different circumstances, and with very different philosophies. In that regard, their approaches are almost polar opposites. The Mercedes squad already has a year of learning with HWA, and has James as its sole figurehead. Porsche, meanwhile, comes in cold and has four different heads of state. But the differences go deeper.

That said, there is something of a similarity between the teams. Having participated in motorsport during this decade of hybridisation, the two already have experience in developing racing-grade electric motor systems. The group behind Mercedes' FE powertrain is based in Brixworth, as part of the High Performance Powertrains clan that produces the internals for the F1 project - including the MGU-K. And, as James explains, that's a neat little bank of knowledge that Mercedes could transfer over to its FE project.

"If you look at the power units' fundamentals, they're very much the same whether it's the F1 ERS system or the FE power unit," he explains. "So, the beauty is that the team we've got at HPP are the same guys that were working there back then when we were developing the ERS system. So, there's naturally been the knowledge transfer that has come across.

"Having said that, Formula E has some fundamental differences as well. The one thing that you notice very quickly and very early on is that as soon as you take the combustion engine out of the equation the focus is fully on the electric machine, and that changes things very significantly. So for us, especially on the software side of things, it's been a very steep learning curve, and that will continue going into season six as we fine-tune our approach and our processes."

Porsche has a different bank of knowledge to pick from, and that's from its days as a World Endurance Championship dominator. There, it had a 185kW MGU-K mounted to the front axle on the 919 Hybrid, so the car could transition to a four-wheel drive layout when in use. But, although there's the opportunity for its engineers to apply what they learned in a new environment, Porsche's FE motor is a complete clean sheet design.

"It was quite an interesting exercise," explains Malte Huneke, Porsche's technical project leader. "Of course we have experience from the hybrid project that we did at Porsche Motorsport. But still it's something completely different and we could combine it a little bit with the strengths that we've built over the last years - software and powertrain from the hybrid side, structure, etc. It was quite exciting after those last years of LMP1 to make a car and start new again.

Porsche doesn't feel the need to pour expense into a braking system project if performance can be found in the braking management software instead

"Part-wise, there's no single part that you take over. It's just more the sum of the learning and the knowledge that you have built up that you take over. With a new project, there is a chance to rethink things because you have the opportunity to start from scratch, so you don't have to change everything from a full-running development process. We could build on that and extend that on a completely different path with a full-electric car."

Although the motor is the focal point of what teams can develop themselves in FE, there's other ancillary components that are important too. Crucially, brake-by-wire is one such example. In using a brake-by-wire system at the rear in combination with the regeneration under braking from the motor, squeezing every drop of efficiency out of both can provide some extra morsels of performance.

This is where the two approaches of the German giants diverge once more. Mercedes already has brake-by-wire infrastructure in place, again from its F1 programme. Not all of the FE teams produce their own brake-by-wire systems, and while DS has a product based on that used in the former Citroen World Rally programme, many have sourced theirs from braking specialists LSP. Mercedes suggests there's added value in putting its own system together to create something apparently bespoke for its own powertrain.

"We've taken the approach that brake-by-wire is something highly complex and integral to the energy management system as well," says James. "So that's something we've done a lot of work on in-house and with our partners as well.

"First and foremost, it's about giving our drivers confidence in the braking system. We saw last year in Formula E, because we've [had] that opportunity to attack and defend, you can be more robust in your driving and if a driver has confidence then they're going to use that to their advantage."

Porsche's view opposes that approach. It has followed the lead of many of its new rivals and bought in a fully-developed system, also believed to be sourced from LSP. Matter-of-factly, Huneke explains that Porsche doesn't feel the need to pour expense into a braking system project if performance can be found in the braking management software instead.

"The performance differentiator is more on the software side, as far as braking is concerned," he explains. "At the end of the day, the brake-by-wire needs to supply the pressure of a maximum value, and it needs to do that in a certain amount of time. It should do this with a certain weight and a certain power demand. So, if we get all this, there's diminishing returns at some point."

Software, of course, is FE's silent battleground. Since all the hardware is homologated before the start of the season - October 31 in 2019 - the secret to unlocking more performance over the season lies in codes and maps. As new manufacturers, that's something that both Mercedes and Porsche must crack quickly, especially with such tight margins expected in the pecking order of the upcoming campaign.

Despite being an FE rookie, Mercedes has a customer tie-up with Venturi, which will offer some small, yet tangible advantages. Not only can Venturi offer its experience of developing software for FE powertrains (previously in conjunction with technology company ZF), but Mercedes can also get more information from a wider pool of drivers.

"We keep the communication channels open there [at Venturi] as well," James continues. "We'd be crazy if we didn't, and Edo [Mortara] was also involved in some of the track testing early-on. Felipe [Massa] came into that a little bit later, so they're guys with FE experience and that really counts for a lot. To have the opportunity to have the four drivers, it's a no-brainer in terms of helping out with that kind of process."

Although the HWA-operated Mercedes squad technically has a year under its belt thanks to its affiliate's exploratory season as a Venturi customer team in 2018/19, the transition to manufacturer-and-supplier is a huge leap. James explains that although HWA's foundation year helped to get his team ship-shape operationally, Mercedes still needs to build on that as an FE manufacturer if it is to perform strongly in the long-term.

"Of course it's been a benefit having HWA in to get season five behind it," he says. "But I'd say that benefit is more focused on the operation side of things, which is of great importance as well. This whole series runs very differently to other series that we've been used to - Formula 1 and DTM - and this is a whole different ball game.

"It's interesting looking up and down the pitlane and seeing the different approaches between us, as newbies, and the other newbies, and the established teams with years of learning behind them. For us it's [about] making sure we have a consistency and a robustness in place, as we approach that first race. But, of course, we want to come in being competitive."

Although Porsche is open to becoming a powertrain supplier one day, it recognises the need to get its own house in order first. This is Porsche's first outing as a manufacturer team since it ended its WEC programme at the end of 2017, and there's race-rustiness to shake off.

Mercedes looks to have some good race pace, Porsche seems to be a little further behind

That does mean that, relative to the cumulative Mercedes and Venturi mileage (Mercedes' 15 days of private pre-season testing, plus both squads' running at Valencia), Porsche's powertrain gets less time to stretch its legs away from the race track. But as a supplier the team would also have to divert vital resources and risk having its attention split between two parties if it had taken on a customer team.

"The benefits are clear and well-known," Huneke says. "You have more test days, and more test tyres, and depending on the relationship you have with a customer you can also share duties on a race weekend. Of course there are benefits, but at the same time there is effort, so it's a mix.

"For us, at the end of the day, we cannot control it; under the rules we have to supply if someone asks us. For this season, logically, nobody asked us and we are happy that first of all we can sort out ourselves.

"I think we still have room to grow. [Testing was] not everything sacrificed for performance, but still we have some room and still have different pieces and need to put the puzzle together to go a little bit further up the ranks. This is the aim. But we also didn't expect to show up and be on top, because to be honest everyone else would look stupid. And nobody is stupid, it's a very high level of competition and that was sort of expected."

Indeed in reality, neither Mercedes or Porsche showed up at the Valencia group test and immediately rose to the top. Although the unrepresentative nature of the Circuit Ricardo Tormo only offers nonsequitious snippets of the potential 2019-20 order, the initial view is that both teams have varying degrees of work to do.

From the off, Mercedes looks to have some good race pace; Stoffel Vandoorne 'won' the test's first simulated race-style running, while Mortara showed consistently strong pace for Venturi in the second 'race' on the final afternoon to hint that it is a consistent package. But there were some reliability concerns too; Nyck de Vries spent most of the first day in the pits with an unspecified issue that caused a blown battery fuse, although Mercedes has not yet revealed the cause of that problem, and he then crashed at the chicane early in the next morning.

Porsche, meanwhile, seems to be a little further behind. But given the close proximity of times in the current FE field, that's not necessarily a disastrous position to be in. Crucially, though, based on the overall fastest times and an assessment of long-run pace from the second test 'race', the team seems to be ahead of NIO and should not be expected to prop up the field.

On qualifying pace, Porsche's best time (courtesy of Andre Lotterer) was actually a few hundredths clear of Vandoorne's benchmark, but Massa and Mortara proved to be the Venturi cats further up among the midfield pigeons.

If Vandoorne and de Vries can better their customer counterparts, then there's reason for Mercedes to be optimistic about the season ahead. Porsche should still factor in the battle for points - but in such a congested field where numerous teams are competitive, it must be prepared to use the likely lessons of its first season to mount a more consistent challenge in the campaigns to come.

As two well-funded, historically successful racing outfits, there will be huge attention on Mercedes and Porsche's FE fortunes over the coming years.

While victories may prove elusive in their first seasons as manufacturer entities, the very different approaches taken by both teams will more than likely prove to be a very interesting side-plot of FE's sixth season.

And if they can succeed, what chance of another manufacturer throwing its hat into the ring? With FE's growing profile across the world, the likelihood of another electric sheep joining the field for the championship's seventh season is surely not in doubt.