With five wins, 10 pole positions and 24 podium finishes, Mahindra Racing can claim to be one of the more successful teams in Formula E. Present since the championship's inception in 2014, it had time and again proved its credentials by taking the fight to some of the best in the business.
However, the Indian manufacturer has been on a downward trajectory over the last few years and the 2023 season has marked a new low for the team in the series. Scoring points in just four of the 12 races, Mahindra languishes ninth in the teams' championship and only overhauled FE’s perennial backmarker NIO 333 courtesy of Lucas di Grassi's run to seventh at Portland. Its customer team Abt Cupra brings up the rear, both teams having to miss the inaugural Cape Town round after rear suspension issues surfaced.
Amid the turmoil, the team split with Oliver Rowland who only joined for the 2021-22 season. Series newcomer Roberto Mehri has yet to score since replacing the Briton, whose best result had been a sixth in Hyderabad. Di Grassi's pole position and third place in the Mexico season opener sits firmly as an outlier against the rest of Mahindra's season.
It’s a sharp contrast to the team’s peak in 2016-17 when it was on the podium at nearly every race, including a famous 1-3 result at Berlin in 2017 with Felix Rosenqvist and Nick Heidfeld, or the start of the Gen2 era leading up the halfway stage of the 2018-19 championship with Jerome d'Ambrosio. To put its decline into context, Mahindra has racked up just a single Formula E victory in the past 53 months courtesy of Alex Lynn’s impressive drive in London in 2021 and has only occasionally troubled the podium finishers.
It is this drop in form that makes reviving Mahindra a huge challenge, but it’s a task its new CEO Frederic Bertrand is prepared for. Catapulted into the seat at the end of the Gen2 era following the team’s shock split with Dilbagh Gill, the FIA’s former director of Formula E has been working behind the scenes on an overhaul to get Mahindra fighting at the front on a consistent basis again.
Given his background and Mahindra’s previous success, one would expect his work to yield immediate dividends, especially now that Mahindra also has a home race in Hyderabad. But Bertrand wants to take a more methodical approach and gradually rebuild the team after years of underperformance.
“In a way, it's difficult because everybody is impatient and would like to see a result like this and I'm the first one who would love to,” Bertrand tells Autosport. “But motorsport is difficult and Formula E in particular.”
Source: Autosport