For the first time since the 2015 Beijing E-Prix, the Envision Formula E team will be without one of its talismanic staffers at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez next month.
Leon Price passed on the garage keys to his equally long-serving colleague Matt Roberts in Sao Paulo earlier this month, after a decade-long stint with the team.
In reality this was no traditional team manager role. Price was much more than that, indeed his official title was team and sporting director. He dealt with drivers, accountants, the wider team, and many, many trips to the stewards' office to lobby on behalf of the team and his occasionally miscreant drivers.
It was Price who was a key figure in getting Sebastien Buemi’s Jakarta podium in June reinstated, a real rarity in motorsport.
Price - the son of motorsport entrant, team owner and all-round industry legend David Price - is more than just a chip off the old block when it comes to multi-tasking, with a racer's heart.
“You just grow into different roles and it starts to overlap a lot more with other areas of the team as well, to sort of bring all parties together,” Price tells The Race.
“So, it's definitely evolved. I've been very fortunate and had the trust from Sylvain [Filippi, team principal] to just let me operate and manage the team from an operational point of view, which is really good.”
Price’s mentors in motorsport are strong. Obviously his father was a key figure, having given ‘Half Price’ as he was amusingly known in his initiation years in motorsport work experience and a role in his composites business in the mid-1990s.
Laminating components for an array of industry customers was the hard-knock start in the business but it then followed at the racetrack where Price worked for David Price Racing teams at Le Mans and then in GP2 with drivers such as Olivier Pla and Mike Conway.
Following that, Price went to work for Formula One Management and was seconded to the role of Head of Operations in GP3 for several seasons.
It was here that he worked closely with Charlie Whiting, who Price states was someone he learned an “awful lot from on a sort of regulatory basis”.
Whiting also occasionally became a good contact to have on speed-dial once Price reached Formula E, as he recalled his then-Virgin team being up before future F1 race director Michael Masi in the 2016 finale at Battersea Park and Whiting making time to help even while in the middle of F1's 2016 Austrian Grand Prix weekend.
“Dragon Racing tried to protest us and we were in there for hours and hours and hours," Price recalls. "I dropped Charlie an email, and bless him, he was probably the busiest man in the world and he got back to me straight away, gave me a load of advice and we ended up winning the appeal.”
Price found his way to that FE team role because he'd been missing the competitive side of motorsport and through Trevor Carlin obtained a role with Mahindra in the final half of the inaugural Formula E season.
That Carlin and Mahindra dynamic never worked out and Price was approached by then Virgin Racing management duo Alex Tai and Sylvain Filippi.
“I met Alex and Sylvan in a small little cafe in Clapham, they made me an offer which I gratefully accepted,” recalls Price.
“I could really see the direction of the championship and the team and their partnership with DS which was coming on stream for the second season.”
Jean-Eric Vergne arrived at the team for 2015-16 where he would join Sam Bird. Fireworks weren’t far away and Price was right in the middle of them.
The Virgin giant-killing years
The second season for Formula E was a huge technical testbed with the opening of the powertrains. DS, a recently relaunched brand within the PSA Group (now Stellantis) was busy trying to tame all-electric packages. It chose Virgin as team partner and the combination scored a spectacular early triumph.
In the fourth round of the season in Buenos Aires, Bird pushed to the front in what was a decent package on energy management but with a dual-motor set-up was heavy and on certain circuits not as dextrous as others, notably the Renault.
But Bird’s prospects looked good when e.dams Renault driver Buemi, who had taken two of the opening three races, started a lowly 18th on the grid. But he soon carved his way through the field and with a dozen laps remaining was on the back of leader Bird, who defended stoically albeit via some lurid oversteery episodes.
“I remember it was a horrendous race to watch in the garage, because we were under so much pressure from Buemi, lap after lap after lap,” Price says.
“The Renault was so good, so efficient, fast and light, and was the best car on the grid but Sam was, well he was being Sam and he held him off to win it.”
At that same race Bird’s team-mate Vergne fell ill on race day morning and then came into conflict with team principal Tai, which laid down an irritable marker for the rest of the season.
It came to prominence in Paris where Vergne and Bird jousted for second place behind Lucas di Grassi’s Abt Audi. Contact between the pair led to a fiery debrief, one that Price recalls well.
“They were two big characters, and two great drivers, and yes it boiled over a bit, but it was OK in the end,” says Price.
“It’s not what you want to see on the track, that's for sure, but they got over it.”
The next season Bird had the perfect weekend in the first ever New York City E-Prix, taking a rare double. It was also a weekend where one of the drivers Price will help run in the Cadillac Hypercar team with Jota next season, Alex Lynn, made a serious name for himself.
“Alex came in completely cold really and did an amazing job to get a debut pole but Sam was just unbelievable that weekend,” Price says.
“A double win in New York, which actually is probably one of my favourite locations, was mighty.
“We’ve always been quite successful there. We've got a few wins over the years with different drivers [Robin Frijns and Nick Cassidy], but to do it with two wins in two days was pretty special.”
The Audi partnership
Virgin switched from DS Performance to Audi for 2018-19 as the latter became a customer provider for the first time.
It also mean a shift in working practice for Virgin, which for the start of the new rules-set was acquired by the Envision renewables company, formed and based in China.
But stability, a key strand through the team since its investiture in 2014, was kept with senior team members Filippi and, on an operational level, Price.
The preparation that Audi brought was an eye-opener for many, including conducting a near 24-hour test at a remote and little-known test track near the Arctic Circle called Valerbanen. The attention to detail was remarkable, as running at the tiny facility enabled Audi and Envision Virgin driver Bird to run in the height of summer when only four to five hours of darkness fell upon the region.
“Everyone has a different way of working, and I think we learned an awful lot from DS and from Audi in different ways of how they test and how they race,” says Price.
“Overall, the experience of working with Audi was very good. We'd spend a lot of time over there collaborating on their simulator. Like all relationships there are ups and downs, but we were all working towards the same goal.
“We learned an awful lot working with Audi as they were well trained in having customer teams in all of their DTM or GT projects and they know how to work with us.”
The Frijns enigma
Price enjoys talking about drivers and has a genuine high opinion of all the ones that passed through the team in his time there.
There is an obvious soft spot for Bird, but also for his team-mate from the fifth and sixth seasons: Robin Frijns.
Like Bird, Frijns had just missed out on F1 but had remoulded his career in GT3 and Formula E, initially with Andretti for a couple of seasons. But he was forced out of Andretti with conflicting Audi commitments and missed the 2017-18 season completely.
A recommendation from Envision Virgin’s highly experienced and highly rated technical director Chris Gorne was actioned by the owners.
“Chris knew him more than I did and that relationship they had was quite strong at the start,” recalls Price.
“Chris worked very well with Robin and over the years my relationship with him grew and grew and grew, and I would definitely consider him a good friend now.
“He's unbelievably quick, an extremely talented driver, and was great to have around the team, and I think if you ask all his team-mates like Cassidy, Buemi and Bird, they will all say what a fantastic team-mate he was.
"But sometimes with Robin, he used to only get his best results when he was told off either by 'Gorney' or myself. If he got a b******ing, more often than not, he'd go out and get a podium or a win."
Cassidy brings peak Envision
After Bird moved to Jaguar for the 2021 season, Cassidy, who had tested for the team at Marrakech just before the pandemic hit, was drafted in.
The Super Formula and Super GT champion initially took a while to hit his straps but by the start of his third season and the beginning of the Gen3 era, he was ready to push for the title.
“Cassidy was different class,” says Price.
“He took that Gen3 car and it just seemed to suit him. But there was an awful lot of challenges through that season, some big crashes and trying to learn a car, trying to work it, and then rebuilding cars in Cape Town, rebuilding cars in Rome, it was pretty hard.
“We even almost didn’t race in Mexico City because of issues and Seb had a big shunt in pre-season testing. I reckon we did three chassis that season.”
The relationship with Jaguar had a fractious start but soon it was car to beat and through the season it claimed eight wins, 50% of the races, with Cassidy and works driver Mitch Evans taking four apiece.
Yet they lost out to Andretti Porsche driver Jake Dennis, although Envision took the teams' title, by far its greatest achievement yet in Formula E.
“When Phil Charles was there [at Jaguar], they really did an awful lot of work to push to get maximum performance out,” says Price of that time.
“We were obviously extremely grateful they did, because it benefited us a lot and we took the championship in London, which was a real rollercoaster weekend but one which ultimately has happy memories.”
Price has clearly been impressed with Buemi too, and sees him as a benchmark in professional diligence.
“Seb is relentless and he doesn't stop his search for performance of the car at all,” adds Price.
“What I like about him is his preparation and the way he can lead a development. He’s got a way about him which really lifts a team and his win at Monaco last May was just desserts really for the way he goes about his racing. He was kind of owed it after some really bad luck prior to that weekend.”
It was to be the last of the 15 victories that came on Price’s watch, although he himself believes that Envision will achieve more soon.
“It’s a great team with some excellent people there and they’ll have more great times for sure,” he says.
“It’ll feel weird watching it all on TV but I’ll be rooting for them wherever they are in the world.”
