Mahindra Racing team principal Frederic Bertrand has said the team’s brand new car has left a feeling of “good satisfaction” after some competitive showings in Formula E Season 11 so far.
The British-based Indian squad was one of the few FE teams to choose a more lavish launch for its challenger – the M11Electro – which is a brand new car for the season, as opposed to an update of its previous challenger.
Speaking exclusively to Motorsport Week, Bertrand conveyed his happiness at the team’s progress from its poor Season 10, having scored points in every race so far.
“I think in general, quite a good satisfaction level,” he said. “It’s more on the fact that we are already a little bit, not ready yet fully, but at least efficient and able to get points very early like this and deliver good races.
“This was not necessarily expected because the car is fully new for us, so it’s a kind of a learning curve which is very steep and that was what we were looking for.
“But definitely a good reason for being satisfied because when you launch everything new like this, where all the others are just creating evolutions, for sure you expect at the beginning to be a bit more struggling than what we did.
“So I think on the side of the development management and the quality of the car, the reliability and the level of performance, it’s a good satisfaction.”
However, Bertrand has a somewhat glass-half-empty approach in the sense that he has seen points, that in his view could have been won, were not.
“But on the other side, it’s still frustrating because we think that we could have done much better.
“Mexico, we still think that [was] the podium was for us, and the last race [Jeddah] was a bit frustrating because we were so good in quality and not able to deliver the race we wanted to deliver. So it’s Formula E, I think in general, a very tough championship.
“Everybody is so close now that any small mistake or small lack of proper management of the execution and then you end up in a position you don’t want to be.
“But definitely, yes, satisfied with the start, but very much expecting big progresses for the future. And it creates for sure additional expectation now, which we need to manage, let’s be honest, because we did a good start, but some of us did not so good and probably they will also come back.”
Post-Miami races to give Mahindra development ‘push’
The long gap between races has enabled all the teams, including Mahindra, to gather themselves and work on their respective packages to maximise what they have.
Bertrand was philosophical on the situation, intimating all the teams will be in the same boat.
“It is a bit of a challenge in some ways, because as you say, it’s between not letting people think and rethink too much, because we have that problem with having so many and bright engineers that we want to rethink everything at any time.
“But on the other side, it’s still a good moment for additional testing and some additional ideas which need a bit more time to be implemented.
“So definitely, I think the rhythm of the championship after Miami will be so difficult, or let’s say so challenging, that those six, eight weeks in between Jeddah and Miami gives that opportunity to push a lot on all the development you may have in mind.”
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