Positive tests for DS Penske

Traditionally, the teams entered in this series born in 2014 meet each November on the Valencia circuit (Spain). But given the climatic disaster which hit the region less than two weeks ago, the organizers quickly found a fallback solution on the Jarama circuit, near Madrid. It's a track where no one had ever driven in Formula E, and on which we had to add a chicane to meet the expectations of the series. But no matter, the main thing was to ride as much as possible and finish preparing before the start of the championship, next month.

This week was all the more important for everyone, because the 11 teams – 22 drivers – are starting this season with Gen 3 EVOs, in other words single-seaters with a revised design and improved technology. Equipped with an electric motor on the front axle which becomes active in Attack mode (otherwise it is used to regenerate the batteries), these electric single-seaters become more powerful and boast extraordinary performances, notably a 0 to 100 km/h achieved. in just 1.82 seconds.

At DS Penske, the only team powered by a French manufacturer, optimism was in order after this week of testing. The two starters entered by DS Automobiles and Penske Autosport have regularly positioned themselves at the top of the timesheet. And even if these adjustment sessions are not necessarily indicative of everyone's level, being among the fastest rather than among the slowest is still a -good- sign. However, there remain some gray areas to be clarified, and in particular a few key points which could influence the result.

New tires, new challenges

For Eugenio Franzetti, head of DS Performance (the competition department of DS Automobiles), “A lot of things will be decided this season on three major new features. First, there are new tires, which are much softer than those used in the previous two seasons. For the first time, we may have to deal with wear and tear. At the same time, we've seen performance spikes from these gums, which means we'll need to understand their best operating windows to exploit them. This will be particularly important during qualifying. » It is true that the tires supplied by Hankook since the arrival of the Gen 3, two seasons ago, were judged as “wooden” by new drivers, to the point that with higher powered single-seaters the lap times were on some circuits less good than with the Michelins used previously. “ The other feature is the arrival of four-wheel drive because it changes a lot of things » continue Eugenio Franzetti. « Not only does the driver have to adapt, the engineers have to integrate this process into the energy calculations, but this gives a lot of performance on the track. Between Normal (300 kW) and Attack (350 kW) modes, we can have an improvement per lap of 2 s, compared to 0.5 s last year. This point will be very decisive in the race, while Attack mode will be activated (for 8 minutes, in one or more times, Editor's note).

Porsche pose question

The last point identified as sensitive concerns the number of cars that each manufacturer will have on the track. This season, for the first time since the start of the series, the German manufacturer will have 6 single-seaters on the track. On one side the two official Porsches, and on the other those of the two customer teams (Andretti and Kiro). However, everyone knows that in this discipline more than in any other, the recovery of data in order to work on car operating software (notably energy) is a key element of performance. We also remember that Porsche was one of the two brands to dominate last season with Jaguar, and that DS Penske was the only team (with lower budgets) to be able to stand up to them.

What will it be this year? The first answers should reach us on December 7, during the first race of season 11, in São Paulo (Brazil).

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