Something a bit strange and traumatic happened to Porsche in 2022, at the crossroads of Gen2 and Gen3 eras - and it's fighting to make sure it won't happen again.
Back then, Pascal Wehrlein and Andre Lotterer had waltzed to a 1-2 at Mexico City at the start of the season to get Porsche off the mark in Formula E. It was such a dominant win that Porsche afforded its drivers an extra lap in the then-timed race, thus ruining several others drivers' points-scoring possibilities.
But that was the absolute highlight. Lotterer's fourth place in Berlin was as good as it got thereafter, although at Monaco a fortnight before that its season had really imploded.
That was when Wehrlein retired from the lead, and an opportunity for a second E-Prix win. As he spluttered to a halt at Portier, the disbelieving eyes in the Porsche pitbox very soon realised what was going on.
The emphasis at this point felt like it turned more towards Gen3, then in its gestation period. It was a risky decision because the project at that stage was in trouble, although perhaps Porsche taking charge of its own future destiny was exactly what was needed as awkward questions about its so far pretty lacklustre on-track return were beginning to pop up.
If that were not galling enough, Porsche was also forced to see biggest rival Mercedes scoop a second crown before exiting Formula E, mission seemingly accomplished. It laid some deep roots of competitive retribution for Porsche.
As it packed down its equipment in Seoul in August 2022 and surveyed a seventh-place finish in that season's standings, a massive 185 points behind Mercedes, Porsche already knew why it had fallen so far behind in that final Gen2 season, its third in Formula E.
"We had to really work on the weaknesses and improve there," Porsche's Formula E director of motorsport, Florian Modlinger, tells The Race.
"This was not only one big thing, but there were also several little things - reliability, avoidable mistakes, operations, team performance - and the total package was not good.
"But I think what we did as a whole team after that was impressive and where we are now, I think everybody in the team is very happy and proud of what we achieved in the last years.
"But now we have this again [a period of focus on two rulesets], and I expect that everybody will be really close together. This means you need to have a clean season to be able to fight for the championships still. And there you need to see legality, reliability and avoidable mistakes which need to be reduced to a minimum - and then to expect the performance on every single race day as good as possible, close to the maximum."
In parallel, Porsche is building up its Gen4 programme. Like the rest of the manufacturers, it is being pulled every which way as 2026 begins. Upon landing back from Mexico City next week, it will decamp to Almeira in Spain for several days of Gen4 testing with its development car.
"We are going to the track and testing it and this will be exhausting," admits Modlinger.
"This will be exhausting especially for manufacturers who do not have a dedicated test team.
"We don't have one. We use partially our race team to do the tests and this will be a heavy workload for the whole team, and to find the correct balance and the correct compromise to perform in both categories will be the challenge."
And just when you think that the workload and the complexity of weaving Gen3 and Gen4 targets into one timeframe is enough, Porsche has shifted its model now to include a second factory team from 2026-27.
It could be this, rather than the previously described dichotomy of changing rulesets, that is in fact the more challenging obstacle. Starting a new team from nothing, irrespective of Porsche's knowledge and expertise, will be no easy task.
For Porsche's base of Weissach, twin it with Kidlington in Oxfordshire, UK. The cage of Jaguar is being rattled to the same extent when it comes to the Gen4 transference, but in a very different and perhaps more subtle way.
Jaguar's changes are well-chronicled. Nick Cassidy is gone, as is founding team principal James Barclay. Antonio Felix da Costa, new team principal Ian James and much vaunted technical director Theophile Gouzin, who starts this month, have arrived. All of that, in conjunction with a ruleset change, makes for a majorly thick soup to stir.
It's not just a case of plugging in and restarting. Jaguar has to knit working practice and culture into its new shape, and that also includes its technical partner and service provider Fortescue Zero, and all of its intricacies - sporting, technical and political.
"One of the key things is just getting to a point in season 12 where we're as stable as and consistent as we need to be to achieve what we're looking to achieve during the season," James tells The Race.
"If we can do that, then it gets you the headspace that you need to go into the Gen4 development. But Formula E very rarely gives you that opportunity.
"As the curveballs are thrown at us, it's how we deal with those, how we prioritise and make sure that we're not exhausting people in the process, that is going to be absolutely crucial. I think from a team's perspective, that human performance element is going to be absolutely crucial."
Formula E is much misunderstood in this regard. People see the reasonably relaxed calendar of racing, the essentially one-day events, and they assume it's a cosy world championship undertaken at a gentle pace. Nothing could be further from the truth.
So, Formula E is right now is a hotbed of the hardest-working spectacle in motorsport show business and we are about to see which of the manufacturers strikes the right balance of brains and brawn as Gen3 blends into Gen4.
