Antonio Felix da Costa has said that he and his Tag Heuer Porsche team ‘have the ingredients’ to win Season 11 of the FIA Formula E World Championship.
The Portuguese veteran is entering the new campaign off the back of a renaissance in Season 10, winning four races after nearly losing his seat midway through it.
Da Costa told Motorsport Week that pushing for the championship – which was won by team-mate Pascal Wehrlein – this year will come down to consistency, and for the team, not resting on its laurels.
“I feel sometimes it can be quite common in human beings that when you have an achievement, like winning a championship like Pascal and the team did, sometimes it’s a natural instinct to kind of take your foot off the accelerator a little bit and everybody kind of relaxes and that hasn’t been the case at all,” he said.
“They’re pushing as hard as ever if not more so it’s been it’s been cool to see that. It’s been a big push and a lot of work in the background to get this [GEN3] Evo car, you know up to speed and then to for us to make sure that we’re happy with it and we are and for me, obviously it was a very frustrating year last year because I felt like I accomplished more than the year that I won the championship, but you know, we just have to kind of clean things up on my side.
“It cannot be that I mean I had five podiums last year and they were all wins [he includes his harsh Misano disqualification as a win]. I either I win or I’m not scoring points, you know so that’s not the way to to win a championship and we just got to clean things up and finish fifth and fourth and seventh when we have to and win the races that we can and I think that’s the way to win this championship.
“We all know how to do it and a lot of lessons learned – last year was a serious amount of learning as a human being, as an athlete, as a team player and I know we have the ingredients to to perform and to to put a good season together now.”
‘I’m told I drive better when I’m angry’
The aforementioned renaissance came from the dramatic story that emerged in the seven-week gap after São Paulo, when it was revealed Porsche had tested Nico Müller with a view to potentially replacing da Costa.
The reaction he showed was one of defiance – going out and proving everyone wrong in Misano, and following it up with four wins he was allowed to keep, in Berlin, China and both races in Portland.
Prior to the Monaco E-Prix last season, da Costa told MW that his mindset had changed around this time, saying: “Whenever I was having a bad day I was more concerned of what are my bosses thinking what are my sponsors thinking and actually I did change that a little bit and think ‘let’s race for myself and if I do that well then everybody else will win as a consequence’.”
He says now that he will continue in his way, albeit with mindfulness of keeping the respect that comes with driving for a name like Porsche.
“A very good friend of mine that follows everything the other day told me: ‘I know you don’t like it but when you’re angry you perform better.’
“You know me a little bit and I hate to be angry and I don’t want to that to be the way but yeah, I just need to worry about myself, put myself first sometimes and I don’t worry too much about what people will think or say.
“But you know equally you’re racing for such a big brand that needs to be respected, rules to be followed and you know, I’m not saying that that I am an outlaw or anything but it’s finding the right balance between those things, and I think what happened last year really united us.
“I think everybody now is a lot more ready for a bad day. You know last year, from being deep down in a very dark hole, if I’m able to come back from that I think if this year a bad day happens and it will happen – 100% everybody here gets them – we will react to them in a much better way.”
New tyres are ‘a nutcracker’
Our chat with da Costa took place over the Jarama testing week, and one of the big takeaways from the four days of running was the getting to grips – quite literally – with the new Hankook tyres.
“I think our biggest headache in the good way is understanding the tyres – they’re not straightforward at all,” da Costa said.
“I mean we I don’t think we’ve ever had a straightforward tyre in Formula E but It’s really a nutcracker this one, like it’s hard to to understand.
“It’s got various types of behaviors throughout its life. It’s amazing when it’s new then it gets super understeer-y then we’re just trying to understand it and what compensations we need to do for what tyre life we’re facing.
“But at the same time I think obviously we’re stressing the tyres a lot more in a test day where we’re putting a lot more mileage than what we’ll see during a race weekend. So we just have to be a bit clever on how we work with it and doing the mock-up race is very useful for that.
Pit Boost ‘brings a cool dynamic’
With Season 11 now just weeks away, the implementation of the long-standing Attack Charge – now named Pit Boost – idea is close to being finalised.
MW hears opinions are divided amongst the drivers and teams as to whether inclusion of it into the sporting regulations is worthwhile or not, but da Costa is a fan.
“I think on the sporting side I think it will be awesome,” he says. “Like it really brings a cool dynamic to the race and a variable that hard to control as a team.
“You know like like today [testing day three], I was the last car to box, everybody in the in the front group had boxed.
“I was literally alone on track, it felt like I was in a free practice session and then you do a couple of laps like that, then you end up boxing you come come back out in the huge mass of cars, so I think it brings a very cool dynamic to the race and for the fans, so on in that respect I am very much up for it.
” I think in terms of technology and the message we want to pass to the electric mobility world, it makes absolute sense. You know, there is this stigma where if I buy an electric car, I’m gonna have to stop for an hour. That’s no longer the case and the technology available out there… you can add 600 kilowatt speeding charging speed, you can charge a car in five minutes.
“I mean it needs to work and we can’t be having races that are ruined and wins that are being taken away from somebody because the charge didn’t go in or because the car broke down or whatever, so I think that’s the priority.
“I don’t know, it’s not my part to say what they should do but maybe we can find a middle ground somewhere and try and stress the batteries or whatever a little bit less by doing charging at slower speeds or whatever, but I am fully up for it, yes.”
