FE | DS Penske is ready for a new challenge

Jean-Éric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne will find themselves in a situation that smiled on them three times last season, racing on a circuit that no one has ever driven on.

As well as being an individual sport, Formula E requires two teammates to work together to improve the energy efficiency of their cars. For this reason, the electric one is the motor category in which the experience of the drivers becomes even more important.

Using these electric single-seaters requires mastery of numerous modes. Constant contact with an engineer also helps to manage energy and even – which is unnatural for a driver – releasing the accelerator pedal in the middle of a straight line to recharge the batteries (with the risk, otherwise, of not seeing the finish line). And since the circuits are usually city circuits, sometimes teams get to tackle a new track without ever having ridden it before.

That's exactly what will happen this Saturday in the Odaiba neighborhood of Tokyo Bay. It will be the first time in its history that the city closes its streets to traffic for an event of this magnitude. Preparation for the simulator will therefore be a decisive factor.

DS Penske is in a good position, on paper

With the discipline's only two-time champion – Vergne won in 2018 and 2019 – and 2022 world champion Vandoorne among its ranks, the French-American team clearly has a successful driver duo.

Furthermore, last season we saw how they expressed themselves very well on the new circuits. Vergne's victory in Hyderabad (India), the podium in Cape Town (South Africa) and Vandoorne's pole position in Sao Paulo (Brazil) made DS Penske the team that scored the most points on the new circuits, ahead of Jaguar and Porsche, despite their dominance in the rest of the championship. But since the start of the season, the cars prepared by DS Automobiles have closed the gap on their more successful rivals.

“In Sao Paulo, and more generally since the beginning of the season, we responded well in qualifying,” says Vandoorne. “This is encouraging for the future and should give us confidence for Tokyo, although we know that in Formula E nothing can be taken for granted.”

For Eugenio Franzetti, Director of DS Performance, which develops the cars for the DS Penske team, the work done in recent weeks is starting to bear fruit.

“We worked a lot on the energy strategy between the Diryah and Sao Paulo tenders and looked at new areas of development to prepare for Tokyo,” he said.

“No one has ever driven on this circuit and we know that our experience allows us to prepare ourselves in the best possible way for this scenario. It is up to us to seize this opportunity once again, with a solid qualifying session and race. This year we have shown that we be even more competitive and consistent, often bringing both cars into the points. We know we have a card to play. Now it's up to us to do what's necessary.”

The Tokyo circuit is 2.58 km long and features 18 corners, including three long straights and a series of tight corners. From an energy point of view, the track was studied on the simulator by the DS Penske technical teams and drivers at the Stellantis Motorsport factory in Satory, near Paris. In Tokyo, the first tests are scheduled for Friday afternoon, followed by qualifying and the race on Saturday. This will be an important novelty in the history of motorsport in Japan and, perhaps, also for the French-American team DS Penske.