On 14 January, the members of the DS Penske team had little time to congratulate themselves after Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne finished 6th and 8th respectively in Mexico City. No sooner had the race debrief been completed than the team's engineers left the circuit to catch the first plane back to Paris. Why such a rush?
"For some of our strategists, leaving Mexico on Saturday night was the only way they could be in the office on Monday morning," says DS Performance Director Eugenio Franzetti. "When two races are only a weekend apart, we have at best five or six days of work before we have to set off again for the next round. After Mexico City, the first race of the season, there was an incompressible time of around three days to analyse the data so as not to leave anything to chance. This work is vital if we are to improve our cars and make them even better in the future.
"At the same time, we needed to prepare for this weekend, which mobilised another part of our resources. Last week, our simulator was in constant use. Firstly with our test drivers to fine-tune the mapping, then with Jean-Eric and Stoffel, who worked flat out on Thursday and Friday to get to grips with the Diriyah track. After that, everyone had a weekend off, and then we had to fly to Riyadh at the start of the week.”
Source: Autosport