Formula E underwent somewhat of a reset last year with the arrival of the Gen 3 machinery and the third-generation single-seaters were very different from the cars they replaced.
Each team adapted with varying degrees of success, with the combination of a new car and a new tyre manufacturer proving difficult for some teams to digest.
At the end of the season, Jaguar and Porsche stood out at the top of the powertrain manufacturers roster with only DS Penske able to challenge them as the 2023 championship progressed.
In a discipline where experience and data analysis take precedence in the quest to improve performance, it is worth noting that while Porsche and Jaguar dominated the first and second headers, DS Penske was the team that scored the most points in the new races on the calendar.
Jean-Éric Vergne's victory in India and his second place immediately afterwards in South Africa showed that the Frenchman, the discipline's only double champion, had the ability to match the British and German giants.
As the season continued, Stoffel Vandoorne's surge to pole in Brazil gave hope of a wider championship challenge, but from the Monaco round onwards – the ninth race of the season - a lack of success and a few mistakes cost DS Penske precious points.
A fresh start
A few days after the end of the 2022/23 championship, the engineers and drivers returned to training.
DS Penske had a number of developments in the pipeline, waiting to be applied to the DS E-Tense FE23.
"Our single-seater is the most technological, the most powerful and the most efficient of the three generations of racing cars we have developed," says Eugenio Franzetti, Director of DS Performance, the racing arm of DS Automobiles which developed the car.
"It's true that last season was an emotional rollercoaster, with many joys and disappointments, but we haven't given up. As always, we have worked hard to give our drivers an even better single-seater, so that they can compete at the front.
The incumbents at DS Penske are optimistic, as the tracks used in development have clearly produced positive results.
"The best strategy is to work relentlessly," says Jean-Éric Vergne. "Last year, we learned a lot from the car, which was 100% new. We then did a lot of testing, concentrating on the software. It's by improving the software that we hope to get the very best out of our car and make it highly competitive.”
The car management software is the very heart of performance and a programme that can evolve constantly, regardless of any physical considerations. And while the single-seaters were placed in containers bound for Mexico at the beginning of November, just after the tests in Valencia, the teams were able to continue working on the 'soft' and test their evolutions on the development car.
"Since the end of the 2023 championship, we've done a lot of work to gain a better understanding of the Gen 3s," explained Stoffel Vandoorne, the 2022 world champion who spent his first season with DS Penske last year.
"Driving a single-seater is an individual task, but in Formula E it's also a team effort where we share a lot of things. "JEV and I are both chasing victory, but our aim is to work for the team. My aim is to do everything I can to get us back on the winning track quickly and for good.”
Like DS Penske, the other teams have been working hard to fine-tune their cars and enable their drivers to get the most out of them. Which manufacturers will dominate at the start of the season? The first clues will come on Saturday evening, after the race.
