Mahindra are back and eyeing podium positions at least in Season 11 after evidencing a significant upturn in pace and more importantly race efficiency with its new Mahindra M11 Electro package.
Two campaigns of hurt and a paucity in points scoring had naturally taken its toll in some areas of the team but the belief that it could pull itself out of the trough always appeared to be there.
But whether or not is was realistic optimism or not was unknown heading in to the Sao Paulo weekend, publicly at least. Although a very strong pre-season test at Circuit Mallorca had given significant hope, there was a feeling that the opposition was so strong that there could have been a degree of treading water again in the midfield maelstrom.
But Sao Paulo proved that Mahindra have both strong one lap and long run pace at both power levels with Edoardo Mortara lining up seventh, racing solidly in the top 10 and then grabbing fifth place after some brawny scraps with Max Guenther’s DS and Nick Cassidy’s Jaguar.
The backstory to Mortara’s day in the Sambadrome was really overcoming some cul de sacs he and the team went down in the all-important free practice sessions.
“In free practice two, we didn’t really know where we were standing and I was actually quite relieved and pleased to see that we were able actually to go through to the group phase,” Mortara told FEN.
“The (quarter-final) duel (with Guenther, which he lost out by 0.3s) didn’t really go perfectly, and I think that we have to dig deep, like in the data, to understand how to go quicker in in 350kW. But I’m pretty sure that in the next race weekends, we can extract more performance out of the car in quali.”
Th race itself was reasonably straightforward for Mortara, who led his teammate in a tactical train some parts of the race before de Vries fell back slightly after being jumped by Norman Nato’s penalty recovering Nissan. That position though was recovered after Nato got pinged for lining up in an incorrect grid slot for the final re-start.
“We executed a pretty solid race in terms of pace. I think there is the possibility to extract more performance out of the car, but it’s still a good debut, if you consider where we were 12 months ago, and that is leaving us quite positive,” surmised Mortara.
One aspect of Season 11 races that hasn’t changed, and in fact probably been amplified with the general closeness of competition and the fact the cars now have more robust front wings, is the strong-arm tactics employed, by absolute necessity just to survive.
“You always have to pay attention to what is happening in front of you, next to you, behind you, and sometimes, like you kind of like feel overwhelmed with all these things,” reckoned Mortara.
“But it is how it is, and I must say that it’s also creating an extremely difficult championship for the drivers, where I think as a driver, you can make differences.”
Additional reporting by Andy Stobart
