Formula E

Why Jaguar's sticking with policy that cost it most coveted Formula E title

by Sam Smith
8 min read

Three months on from a dramatic London season finale that encompassed the diverse emotions of winning two titles but also losing the one fans remember most, Jaguar is determined to learn its lessons and finally capture the so-far elusive drivers' championship.

The team's bittersweet sign-off to last season, one in which it sealed a first world championship (earning teams' and manufacturers' crowns) since Teo Fabi won the 1991 world sportscar championship in the devastatingly beautiful and fast Jaguar XJR-14, in a way then proffered more questions than answers for the manufacturer.

And it's something months later that will still be on the team's mind as it strives to understand the rights and wrongs of 2024, and what it must (or mustn't) change for the 2024-25 season.

Where Cassidy and Evans stand now

Jaguar’s two star drivers Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans went through trying phases in their co-habitation at the team in their first season together in 2024, particularly at the London finale.

What makes their dynamic together fascinating to many is what they share more than just a nationality.

Each should probably have got at least a crack at F1, they have both won top international championships (Evans GP3 in 2012 and Cassidy Super Formula and Super GT), they both live in Monaco and they both have an intense desire to win the Formula E championship.

They also share some professional characteristics too, namely forceful and persuasive drive and determination. Although they go about these traits in very different ways.

Evans is competitively pure in how he operates and less overtly technical and tactical, and he’s probably got the best eye-to-foot coordination on the grid, and he feels the car with his lower extremities to a degree that astounds some of the engineers he works with.

Character-wise Evans is, like Cassidy, wily and professional. Yet, Cassidy brought something else to Jaguar when he arrived just over a year ago. He brought a highly analytical outlook to getting the best out of the package both on the technical front and in operating and calculating a race day.

That’s not to say Evans was unable to do that effectively because you don’t win 12 E-Prixs without being very assured in the execution department. He’s done it so many times now that he’s earned, rightly, his reputation as one of the very best in the field.

Both Kiwis made key mistakes last season. Cassidy at Portland, when he spun, and Evans in London when he missed the attack mode loops twice.

They have fascinating little chinks in their armour as every driver does. Evans’ appears to be the occasional spike in temper. This can blur the bigger picture of getting the optimum result but it’s getting increasingly rare now as he matures.

It’s much more controlled than it was but there were flashes of it at Diriyah and London last season.

In Saudi, he lost five points after charging up the inside of Jean-Eric Vergne in a do-or-die angry move that was never truly on. In London the fraught final race produced combustible exchanges between himself and the team.

After that race Evans and Cassidy barely spoke.

Indeed, The Race understands it was a number of weeks until the pair exchanged a word, which was a catch-up with mates Norman Nato, Stoffel Vandoorne and Antonio Felix da Costa in the South of France.

Privately each questioned the motives of the other and the opposing sides of the garages. It was fog of war stuff, which on the surface appears to have now cleared…..mostly.

Lasting wounds

The reality is that the two will be civil and generally friendly off the track but post ExCeL they were raging in a pit of disappointment and unrealised potential in securing the lusted title.

The Race has learned that Evans in fact had to be coaxed into attending the season Gala the night after the final race. He did so but left early.

Cassidy hasn’t quite gone to ground but he’s been conspicuously away from any public view on his usually active social media platforms. He will likely not admit to storing ill-feelings in his locker over the last two titles he feels have escaped him. But it will be deep within, somewhere.

One of those will be Portland where Cassidy made an error and in all likelihood spun away a very strong chance to put the title all but to bed.

But the context of how he came to make that rare mistake is key.

“OK Nick, the instruction to both you and Mitch is that we are still racing. Obviously he has that 5-second penalty,” was what Phil Ingram, Cassidy’s engineer, told his charge with just three laps remaining of the first Portland race in June.

Two laps later, almost within sight of the chequered flag, Cassidy was in the weeds.

“I guess I’m heartbroken about the result today because we’d nailed it and it really was the perfect race,” Cassidy told The Race after the drama.

He was staying calm but with everyone knowing Evans had a penalty, yes an unjust one but a penalty nonetheless, it was an awkward moment for everyone of the Jaguar team members that day.

“If I look back at the year, one of the races we know how the strategy played out in that race, that's definitely one (that got away)," James Barclay told The Race.

“We could have done better for sure as a group and that's something which we've discussed and agreed on.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing though. In that moment, we were also trying to consolidate some of the positions we were in, so we were trying to be consistent with the process and consistent with what we've done through the year.

“So yes, for sure, if I look back that's one in hindsight, we'd say we probably would have treated slightly differently on the strategy side.”

Why the title matters

At the forefront of Barclay and Jaguar’s philosophy is how they can finally add the so-far elusive drivers' championship to their trophy collection. To achieve it they will attempt to thread what feels like an ever-thinning needle through the minefield of having two extremely competitive animals in its den.

“There are things that we could have all collectively done differently and better, but at the same time, there are things we did really well in that process too,” Barclay told The Race.

“What we did is a really fair approach. You could argue too fair, in that we said we want our drivers to have equal opportunity to win a world championship, and we took that down to the final day trying to get the teams', the manufacturers' and the drivers' world championships.

"That's a hell of an ask. We got two out of the three (titles) and we were very successful last season but the one piece (missing) was on the driver's side.”

That missing piece of course is the one that the TV viewers and the fans emphasise and imbibe in the most.

The teams don’t see it that way though. The greater good is always the operation, the team, the brand, the manufacturer. It’s almost an unspoken truth in any team.

And the friction that inherently lies in the dichotomy of driver and team is also often misunderstood. The drivers bring remarkable skill, commitment and professionalism. For that they get paid very well, with both Jaguar’s drivers taking home seven-figure pay packets for their endeavours.

But money can’t always buy success for individuals and sometimes the bigger picture has to be the success of the team as a whole.

It is not without reason that Barclay was the leading ‘voice’ in lobbying the FIA and Formula E Operations for the introduction of a manufacturers' crown in 2023.

The sporting arguments cloaked a deeper message though, one that Barclay would have subtly wanted to have extolled to the Jaguar Land Rover board as he presented cases for continuing into Gen4.

Last March the official manufacturers' championship for 2025 was confirmed and an interim title was mandated for 2024. Six weeks later Jaguar’s long-term future in Formula E was secured and celebrated with the clinking of champagne in the Monaco harbour.

Yet ultimately the drivers accrue the points, and they do it in a real living soap opera of rivalry, ambition and adrenalin. That’s why the drivers' title will always grab more attention.

“Looking at how we manage things going forward it is definitely something on our part that is a work in progress,” says Barclay.

“That's what we'll do together with the drivers and look at how we can find ways of optimising to avoid what happened this year.

“But both our drivers were in a position to win the world championship in the last race, so what's your measure of success? That's firstly, a huge success coming to the last day.

“Now, how do we take that next step in the future? That's going to be our goal going into the new season.”

Jaguar had maximised its points as a team pretty well last season, especially at Monaco (a 1-2 masterclass) and Shanghai (a strong but not without choreography 1-3).

It could have been better, of course. There was some compromised orchestration in Berlin and then came London where it couldn’t capitalise on a 1-2 in the early stages and title rival Wehrlein being held up by Max Guenther’s Maserati for a couple of laps.

It was a true ‘rock and hard place’ situation but had Jaguar made a decision on overtly granting preference to the better-positioned Cassidy, then he would have sealed the title reasonably comfortably.

Cassidy ultimately got unintentionally swiped by Wehrlein’s team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa.

It's factually correct to say this probably cost him the title. But had he not been allowed to drop behind Wehrlein in the first place he’d never have been in that position to be swiped.

“We will review how we do that going forward as a group, together, collectively with the drivers of the team to say, right, how do we avoid that end,” remarked Barclay.

“The ultimate desire is to put them in the best place to win a drivers' championship, but ultimately it comes down to only one can win it at the end.

“At the same time, the strategy was right, in the context to win a teams championship, you need drivers scoring points at all times in both cars, and that's the kind of process which we'll do going into next season.”

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