DS Penske’s Deputy Team Principal and Team President, Phil Charles, recently spoke to Motorsport Week about his new challenge since leaving Jaguar, comparisons to Adrian Newey and what the future of FIA Formula E may look like.
When sat across from Phil Charles, the overwhelming characteristic that the new DS Penske Deputy Team Principal conveys is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for a form of motorsport in which he is highly-respected, a new challenge which is clearly being relished, and for the work that he puts in, especially when he derides from it the results he has.
Charles joined Penske early in Season 10, having left Jaguar TCS Racing in the off-season, and whilst he has not been in the job for long, it appears that Charles’ influence has already been felt, with the team steadily improving, with one-lap pace on show in Misano, and most recently, Stoffel Vandoorne claiming third place in Monaco, with team-mate Jean-Éric Vergne just behind in fourth place. Charles explains the job so far and the early stages of improving the car.
“I joined in February so I haven’t had long,” he says.
“And what you have to do early on is just assess what’s going on – you can’t have a full view of what we’ve got and what we haven’t got on day one, so my initial job has been to try and take stock of what we’ve got, there are a few low-hanging fruit that you come in and, over my years in F1 and Formula E, that’s something that makes life a bit easier.
“So, there are a couple of those, but on the whole it’s just been gently easing myself into understanding what we’ve got and what we haven’t got and we’re very lucky we’ve got a lot of good people, but the championship has changed massively in the last few years, it’s been on a really accelerated gradient for improvement, so we’re just trying to understand what’s here and then I’ll make the next moves in the coming months.
“But on the whole, we’ve got some really good people, so we’ve got all the good building blocks.
“It’s just kind of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ a little bit and tracking the improvement of the championship as everyone develops and goes forward.”
After leaving the then-Toro Rosso Formula One team, Charles moved into Formula E with Jaguar, taking the team from the back of the grid to the cusp of world titles, with its powertrain customer Envision Racing claiming the Teams’ Championship 2023. Charles says that feeling he was taking Jaguar as far as he could as well as the lure of a new challenge was what prompted the move.
“As always. it’s not just one thing.
“I’m very very proud of what I achieved over the six years – I went from last in the championship to first and second with the two Jaguar cars – the customer team [Envision] and the main team – so I felt like I’ve been on a really very positive slope and I really enjoyed that getting better and better, but we were cresting.
“And then Jay Penske rang me up and, to be honest, in the first ten minutes of the call, it was really really clear what he wanted to do.
“He goes racing because he loves going racing, he doesn’t have to sell drinks or cars or anything like that – he goes because he wants to go and he wants to win and that’s everything I stand for.
“I enjoy making teams better, I love getting to that point of winning races and he hit all the buzzwords for me and then on top of that, obviously I work with Jev, I’m really pleased to work with Stoffel and I can see there’s a good group of people here so great opportunity to almost go again and do the same thing.
“I really enjoyed the Jaguar process and this isn’t a step all the way back because we were starting from a very early point in their development, this is a strong group of people but there’s a chance to go and make some next steps and have some good results.”
Has Charles got added benefit in Vergne and Vandoorne – both Formula E Drivers’ Champions – being the men that drive the cars?
“That always helps massively and the two that we’ve got here, both world champions, is a really big asset for the team.
“On the tricky days they give you really strong feedback of where we need to get to, sometimes when you get a rookie driver they haven’t seen it, so on the tricky days you get a good and clear feedback and then on the good days when the car’s in a good shape, both of these two can storm some race wins for you, so they’re great to have.
“Certainly over my career, I’ve really enjoyed working closely with the drivers and being part of putting a package together around the drivers is really really key.
“In motorsport we’ve got so many fantastic engineers but the ones that really achieve fantastic results, they work well together as engineers as a group and they wrap their really cool technology, really cool ideas around the driver, so that’s a key part of the game.”
One of the common tags that Charles is given is being known as Formula E’s answer to Adrian Newey, perhaps the most successful technical figure in the history of Formula One. Charles smiles shyly. As flattering as this is for him, it is something he takes with a lot of level-headedness and modesty.
“Yeah, it’s a really wonderful thing and it’s great when your family read that, that’s more for them than it is for me, so no, it’s a wonderful thing for people to say and I’d like to think that as people say in my previous recent history, you’re doing really well.
“It’s just come from years and years of chipping away and understanding.
“I’ve been very very lucky in my early Formula One days, I managed to move around the bottom of a Formula One team, so I learnt lots and lots of things, including being a mechanic for a while, research and development, design – I was a designer for a long time – and I’ve really enjoyed in recent years the aerodynamics in F1 and now power training in Formula E, so I’m very very lucky in that, whilst I’m probably not a master of any one particular subject, I’m very lucky in having a nice cross-section – I really enjoy tyres and I really enjoy power training, so these are really the big bits and then putting that together, like we said before, putting those big bits together around the driver, that’s the bit I enjoy.
“So yeah, very pleased people say that, but it’s more about the work that you do over the time.”
One big talking point surrounding FE in recent weeks has been the discussion around potentially more purpose-built circuits being included into the calendar, with Misano having already hosted a double-header weekend this season and with rumours about a potential switch to Silverstone for the British race venue. FE’s CEO Jeff Dodds has insisted the DNA of the championship is kept as it is, but with the possibility of one or two tracks like Misano being included. I’m keen to get Charles’ opinion on this, not just a personal opinion, but also on how this translates into the cars from a technical perspective.
“So, technically, when you design your race car, you really want a good idea of what kind of track it’s going to go around, so from a technical point of view, it’s not that you have an opinion, because you probably do have an opinion, but you just want a clear view.
“With setting a car up and designing it, there are suspension characteristics, how much we invest in suspension, versus how much we invest in powertrain.
‘Those balancing acts, and how we look after tyres, are all very different on a street circuit compared to a big open track.
“So from a technical point of view, I’m not saying that we don’t mind, because we do, but being able to know what we’re going to design around is key.
“Now, if it happens to be that it’s going to be 50-50 of the two different types of track, if there are distinct different types of track, and there probably aren’t distinct differences in the two tracks, they tend to merge and overlap a little bit, then that’s another challenge – you have to cover for a very wide envelope, and so that’s an interesting technical question
“First of all, so from a technical point of view, I wouldn’t say I don’t mind, but if you consider, for a minute, I haven’t got an opinion, I quite enjoy the fact that we’ve got to eyeball what we’re aiming at, so have I got to cover for a Silverstone?
“Have I got to cover for a tight, twisty London or Rome?
“That’s really, really an interesting technical question, so I enjoy that, I enjoy that aspect of saying: ‘right, what’s the best overall characteristic to aim for in your car?’ And that includes a lot of simulation nowadays, it’s trying to take account of those different tracks and simulate and say ‘the best overall result for the season based on the simulation is this’, and therefore I need to concentrate on these parameters in order, prioritise them, so that’s an interesting thing.
“In terms of my view and my opinion, I think Jeff’s probably got it right, and I think for the good of the championship, it makes sense to do a little bit of both.
“I understand others’ views as well, because the street tracks have been the DNA of Formula E, they are amazing fun, they’re a massive challenge, whether that’s from the driver point of view with walls coming at you in a tight, twisty section, that is a really amazing and it’s a different thing for our championship.
“I wouldn’t want to lose the street track DNA completely, but at the same time, I think we’ve done a lot of taking the championship into cities and I think it’s a nice blend when you have a racetrack that’s quite near a city, but has got very nice facilities.
“It’s good for us to take our sponsors there with a great view that overlooks the track, so there’s an obvious reason to want a bit of a blend of both, so that’s where I stand.”
It seems that, whatever the direction Formula E takes, DS Penske are in the safest possible hands with Charles heading-up the technical side. It would be churlish to discount the team from making further strides, and, with GEN3 Evo on the horizon for next season, seeing them challenge on a regular basis very soon.
