The eight major plotlines to watch in Formula E 2021

Even if the tantalisingly close 0.8-second gap that split the Formula E field in December's Valencia test cannot be relied upon as a true barometer of the form-book for the year ahead, the 2020-2021 season promises to be a stellar one.

With two major manufacturers eager to depart on a high, a new home for one of the two drivers to have contested every FE race since the beginning and highly-rated rookies aiming to hit the ground running, there are plenty of subplots to keep an eye on.

Here are the eight key topics to look out for.

1. BMW and Audi's last hurrah

A pathological appreciation for data and a podium in Berlin aided the very easy case for Audi to retain Rene Rast for the full 2021 season. But the triple DTM champion had no idea he was effectively signing up for a one-year gig, with the marque quitting the series at the end of the coming campaign.

Likewise, that Audi has invested heavily in developing its new FE powertrain in-house for the first time suggests the race team was caught somewhat by surprise with the decision from above to exit. The same is true of the Andretti Autosport operation, with many staff only finding out its partner BMW was heading for the door when an email landed while they were waiting to check-in for their flight out of Valencia Airport.

Audi will walk away having guided Lucas di Grassi to the 2016-17 drivers' title. It also won the teams' crown the following season. But with its final stint in the championship, it will look to that new powertrain to add to its 12 victories in FE after chalking up a first win-less campaign last year, having dropped from second down to sixth in the standings.

BMW has a habit of not sticking around in motorsport, regardless of its success - see GTE, top-flight sportscar racing and Formula 1. It doesn't stand by its programmes to allow them to evolve sufficiently to get the results. After just two seasons of full factory backing, it's ready to wave farewell to FE also.

PLUS: Why BMW and Audi have pulled the plug on FE

While that's a reflection on some of the issues with the series at present, there's little denying that BMW has yet to reach the heights. As Antonio Felix da Costa and Alexander Sims looking to pastures new in recent years shows, BMW doesn't cultivate consistent results (and modest salaries play a part, too) to encourage its talent to stick around.

Maximilian Guenther, again the youngest driver on the grid, and rookie Jake Dennis will look to salvage the team's form in 2021, after its genuine bid for the title last season crumbled in Berlin.

While Audi can look back on its titles, for both German marques there's much to be done during their swansong seasons so they don't depart FE as recent high-profile underperformers.

2. Can NIO 333 and Dragon close the gap?

The 2019-20 season was a placeholder for the NIO 333 squad. On the eve of the campaign, it was bought out by Chinese firm Lisheng Racing. Free from the distractions of the EP9 electric supercar that had occupied some engineers, a staff restructure promoted the talent. But the new owners decided to switch suppliers to Integral Powertrain with just three months before the first race with an eye to long-term gain for the sake of short-term pain.

As a result, NIO 333 - which, remember, then as China Racing and NEXTEV, guided Nelson Piquet Jr to the inaugural drivers' title - was again the de facto Formula E backmarker last season. In 2021, however, it will make huge strides forward.

Crucially, modesty has been retained. NIO 333 knows it won't jump from a point-less campaign to challenge DS Techeetah at the top over one off-season

The new powertrain is a start, and in Cambridge engineering graduate Oliver Turvey and new team-mate Tom Blomqvist - who beat Daniel Abt and Tom Dillmann to win the seat - it has the ideal driver pairing around which it can galvanise.

PLUS: The master plan to turn around FE's perennial struggler

Turvey says: "A lot of effort has been put in to develop this new powertrain for the next two-year cycle. A lot of the focus last year even was put towards this. I hope we can be fighting in the midfield more consistently."

Points and all-round improvement are the targets. The optimism, both on- and off-the record, from the NIO 333 camp is clear. But, crucially, modesty has been retained. The team knows it won't jump from a point-less campaign to challenge DS Techeetah at the top over one off-season.

Should the improvement come as anticipated, it could leave Dragon Penske Autosport at the back of the pack. Why certain team staff and drivers have been let go in recent times make for stories best left for future memoirs that have been written with sound legal oversight.

Jay Penske's squad proved its one-lap credentials last year in Berlin, with Serge Sette Camara - replacing Brendon Hartley - and the incumbent Nico Muller, whose signing for this season was left late, qualifying inside the top 15 on five occasions. But, not including Sette Camara's crash and subsequent retirement in race three, they lost an average of 6.75 positions from those relatively lofty grid slots each time.

It has two very quick drivers, the second and third-fastest in pre-season testing, and has announced a critical engineering and data partnership with Bosch. A new powertrain will come in for the Rome E-Prix onwards to boost performance, but erraticism has reared its head in the past.

With NIO 333 on the up, Dragon Penske Autosport needs to find a calm fix for its race pace should it want to avoid bringing up the rear.

3. Fresh layouts pepper the opening rounds

Given the difficulty in arranging a sporting calendar in the current circumstances, it's remarkable that the first four circuits of the six listed so far will run configurations not previously seen in Formula E.

The teams have been thrown an immediate curveball by last-minute changes to the Diriyah layout. These consist of a handful of minor modifications to open up apexes to speed up sections of the track. It leaves minimal time to optimise simulator programmes as drivers fly to Saudi Arabia earlier this year to allow for two days of hotel quarantine.

Teams won't know the final Valencia layout until two weeks ahead of the 24 April slot. Drivers reckon it will more closely mimic a typical FE street circuit rather than defy convention with lots of fast and open corners

Next up is a heavily revised iteration of the Rome layout, which becomes the second longest lap ever used in FE, to avoid main roads and minimise the impact on local traffic.

Then, so long as Vallelunga - on standby as a reserve destination for an Italian event - isn't called into action, FE will make its debut on a bona fide permanent race track with a round at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo pre-season testing venue in Valencia.

Championship organisers assessed possible configurations over the winter, and teams won't know the final layout until two weeks ahead of the 24 April slot. Drivers reckon it will more closely mimic a typical FE street circuit rather than defy convention with lots of fast and open corners.

Competitors are also currently working to the expectation that the full Monaco Grand Prix route will finally make its FE debut. With the F1, Historic GP and FE weekends taking place within a month of each other, sticking to one layout will minimise disruption for residents. That said, some tweaks could yet be added to avoid direct lap time comparisons.

4. Fan attendance planned for future races

Eight races are a start, but Formula E co-founder and chief championship officer Alberto Longo is planning a record-breaking schedule in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, he says: "We have a very aggressive, optimistic target to do 15 races. This is the season when we will be delivering more races in our history."

The FIA released an initial draft of the calendar back in June, but that's long since been retracted. Instead, rounds will be announced in batches. There's one more to come, which will be unveiled later in the spring.

Autosport understands that FE is currently in talks to add the London ExCeL Centre, plus races in New York, Berlin, Sanya and an inaugural Seoul E-Prix to the schedule. This leaves scope, if all six come to pass, for at least one to become a double-header in order to meet Longo's ambitious aim to surpass the 13-round 2018-19 season.

The races that are yet to be announced won't run beyond a late September date to ensure minimal overlap with the 2021-22 campaign. And any venues that are added have been organised with the understanding that, should restrictions allow, fans will be able to attend.

Longo adds: "The races that are on the calendar are because we are confident on having the public. This is a key factor and decision element for us."

5. Formula E's best-ever rookie

When Audi customer team Envision Virgin Racing signed Nick Cassidy to replace Jaguar-bound Sam Bird, it billed its new recruit as a "rising star". This was not true. As the 2017 Super GT and 2019 Super Formula champion, Cassidy is already an established star and one who should take the FE grid by storm.

"I'd achieved everything I could [in Japan]. I wanted a new challenge and to keep learning" Nick Cassidy

The wonderfully affable 26-year-old makes for a stellar rookie prospect and he enters with an FE record already under his belt. Topping last year's Marrakech test, held in much warmer conditions than the preceding day's race, he bagged the highest average lap speed ever clocked in championship history. From then on, the odds on him moving out of his home in Japan, shared with Jann Mardenborough, became shorter and shorter.

Cassidy says: "Apart from adding multiple championships, I'd achieved everything I could [in Japan]. I wanted a new challenge and to keep learning. The best guys in the world are here and I wanted to put myself up against them."

While he hasn't had the benefits of private manufacturer testing to better prepare for the season, expect Cassidy to give his team-mate Robin Frijns (also a lovely chap) something to think about.

6. Can Jaguar help Bird to a title, and vice versa?

You can't mention Sam Bird without shortly following with the epithet: he's the only driver to win a race in every FE season to date. But in his bid to go further and finally win the title, he's departed his effective second home at Envision Virgin Racing to finally sign for Jaguar - having initially held talks with the squad in 2016.

Jaguar looked as though it had finally found its swagger last year, with undisputed lead driver Mitch Evans on pole in Santiago, winning in Mexico and mounting a stunning recovery from last to sixth in Marrakech. All before his shot at the crown fell away with a loss of car performance in Berlin.

PLUS: The magnificent seven Brits fighting for FE bragging rights

The frequent chopping and changing of his team-mates, and outperforming all of them, has meant Evans has largely had everything his own way within the squad. But Bird, and the quality he brings, will be a different prospect.

The Kiwi and the Brit get on well. Combined, they represent arguably the second-best driver pairing only ranking behind the DS Techeetah line-up. Both remain good bets for an overdue crown and, at last, there are two drivers in the team who can work together to boost Jaguar's own title credentials. How they compare will be one of the more exciting threads to this season.

7. Countdown conundrum

The deadline for teams to commit to the forthcoming Gen3 regulations is fast-approaching. We know cars will be 120kg lighter, increase to 470bhp, and welcome rapid charging and massive increases to regenerative braking capabilities.

What we don't know is how FE will implement some kind of cost cap. It's seen as a must from some quarters. But, with teams already starting to develop their new cars, that spending can't be undone.

PLUS: Why Formula E's 2021 season will be a crucial litmus test

The FIA is revamping the FE supply model to improve the competitiveness of customer teams. Despite being billed as otherwise, it's not unfair to view this as a reaction to Audi and BMW's pending exits.

A concept for the Gen3 car is due in late spring. Along with a formalisation of the new rules, that's not long to wait as FE bids to remain attractive to both prospective and existing competitors.

8. Can Vergne overthrow da Costa?

It's a story we've told before. DS Techeetah was Jean-Eric Vergne's team. He courted the services of Andre Lotterer and then, when the German left for Porsche, again it was Vergne entrusted to tempt eventual replacement Antonio Felix da Costa.

"There are so many other good drivers and good teams out there that I cannot regard Antonio as my only competitor. I have to watch out for everyone" Jean-Eric Vergne

In that time, Vergne won the drivers' crown twice in a row - an FE first - and delivered as many teams' titles to match. But he was thoroughly beaten by da Costa last season. The Portuguese's three wins and runaway championship success played Vergne's solitary triumph, which itself came rather late in the day. The French racer is also more abrasive than his team-mate and lost his cool over the radio on more than one occasion.

PLUS: The story behind the crowning of Formula E's "cuckoo"

Vergne seemed to suffer much more with the brakes in qualifying. Given a great deal of his past title success was built on the days he progressed into superpole, then delivering in the races, the fix that DS Techeetah seems to have found tees up an intra-team fight to be relished in 2021.

"I feel very good with the car," says Vergne. "What [do I need to] do to take the lead again? Always questioning yourself, working tirelessly, obviously more than I was able to do last year."

But, whereas DS Techeetah had a certain degree of command last year, Vergne isn't expecting a simple two-way dogfight.

PLUS: How Mercedes and Porsche can avoid a difficult second FE album

"I wish we were in a Mercedes-style F1 situation where I would only have to worry about my team-mate," he says. "Unfortunately, there are so many other good drivers and good teams out there that I cannot regard Antonio as my only competitor. I have to watch out for everyone."