“When you win and everybody is happy, it’s easy, but when you lose that’s when you really need to become one [in the team] and it shows everybody’s character. I think everybody is pushing hard to help me turn this around.”
For a driver so used to success, having dominated the 2019-20 Formula E season en route to the title, the distinct lack of results so far this year for Antonio Felix da Costa have been difficult to accept, even for the usually ever-positive Portuguese driver.
The 2024 season marks da Costa’s second term with the Porsche team and arguably, on paper, could have offered the 32-year-old a platform from which to challenge for the title.
Instead, the opening three races have yielded no points with the most notable moment being a Mexico retirement after a clumsy collision with Nico Muller that also earned da Costa a grid penalty for the following Diriyah double-header, where 16th and 14th were the best he could muster.
To compound his woes, team-mate Pascal Wehrlein convincingly won the season-opener in Mexico City before reigning champion Jake Dennis took his Porsche-powered Andretti machine to a dominant victory in the Diriyah prequel.
“We can see that the package, even when the Porsche factory team isn’t performing, Andretti is or vice-versa,” da Costa tells Autosport ahead of the Sao Paulo E-Prix this weekend.
“So there are very different ways to make this car perform in every kind of situation and I think we just need to really dig in, open our knowledge and start to understand what works for who and where and I think that’s the biggest lesson.”
It hasn’t always been the case that da Costa has struggled to tame the Gen3 machine, introduced for 2023, and last season offered glimpses at what might be possible.
Third in the inaugural Hyderabad E-Prix was followed by victory in Cape Town having pulled off the overtake of the season to snatch the lead from Jean-Eric Vergne on the penultimate lap. It was da Costa at his best and showcased just what might be possible for a partnership that was still in its infancy.
Next time out in Sao Paulo he overcame the one-lap deficiency of the Porsche powertrain to start second before finishing fourth, which could have been far greater had he not missed the opening corner, requiring him to come to a complete stop before rejoining.
One more podium followed in Portland but others slipped through his fingers through no fault of his own, such as being eliminated by Dennis in Berlin while disqualification for a puncture that dropped the tyre pressure below the legal requirement stripped him of another rostrum in London.
Regardless, the 2023 campaign had provided proof that here was a partnership that had the potential to flourish. Instead, balance issues with Porsche’s latest challenger have meant da Costa has been left frustrated and looking for answers in 2024.
“I would say that bottom line is the balance I’ve been having in the car is not suiting me at all,” says da Costa. “The balance was an issue and then the consistency of the balance was an issue.
“Especially in Diriyah, it was really hard for me to be able to predict what kind of balance I’m going to have in the next corner and, when you’re racing between walls, it is the most horrible thing you can have.
“Of course I’m not going to brake late, of course I’m not going to carry more speed than anybody else if I’m not confident on what my car is going to do. So we try to understand all of that.”
In a championship as close as Formula E, any lack of confidence will only be compounded where the margins between each competitor are so minute. Unlike the majority of drivers on the grid, though, da Costa remains one of a select few to have raced in the all-electric category since its inception in 2014.
He’s proven capable of racing and beating the best the series has to offer and, should da Costa get on top of the problems that have plagued his season so far, then he will undoubtedly be looking to add his current win tally of eight.
But past successes quickly count for little in the cut-throat world of motorsport and da Costa is all too aware results need to improve soon for his Formula E career to be revived, starting this weekend in Brazil.
“I’ve seen other drivers going through similar situations,” he says. “I’ve seen all of them turning it around and, when you think somebody is dead, they come back from the dead and that’s what I’ve got to do. I’m far from dead, of this I’m sure.”
