Perhaps it went so unnoticed because he’s such a part of the Formula E furniture, but Antonio Felix da Costa’s first race with Jaguar last month wasn’t heralded a great deal.
Yes, there was the spectacular accident for rookie Pepe Marti off the back of his Jaguar I-Type 7, and yes there were a million other things kicking off all around him. Yet, da Costa’s 144th Formula E race was a very promising one, and maybe even in the context of his switch from one manufacturer to another in the final season of a rules set, it was among his strongest ever.
It was one that saw him qualify a solid sixth and race at the sharp end for most of the afternoon. It must have exceed expectations?
“A hundred percent it did,” came his unequivocal reply to Formula E Notebook.
“I’m not going to lie; it’s been what felt like a very short time for preparation and I was a little bit on a ‘holiday’ before I could start sticking my teeth into working with this team.
“Everything felt kind of rushed. I think I’ve told you this before, but changing teams is a challenge. I’ve done it before, so I knew what to expect.
“I’ve done a few mistakes with Porsche when I joined (in 2022). I knew how to avoid those. In my mind, and I told the guys, if we go home with some points today, a top six, a top seven, it’s a solid first weekend together.”
While he ultimately didn’t get that due to Marti’s slight, but catastrophic miscalculation, was tough to swallow but there is a renewed serenity around da Costa just now. His experience at Porsche almost feels like a chapter that has added to his arsenal of weaponry when it comes to competing.
“Obviously what we did today exceeded those expectations,” adds da Costa.
“We topped our group in quali and in 300kW power it was very, very good. Our four-wheel drive is not quite there yet. But I’m not, how can I say this? I don’t like how we use the four-wheel drive. Let’s put it like that. There’s an element of the car coming towards me and me going towards the car.
This is a clear reference to da Costa not feeling completely at home with the Jaguar systems yet, the triggering of the all-wheel drive.
“Yeah, it’s all software related,” he agrees.
“It’s fixable, which is good and I just need to spend some time on that. To be honest with you, it was the same in Valencia. I didn’t look flashy on the timesheets because all those laps are on 350kW.
“Here already in free practice, we could see the four Jags weren’t great and I wasn’t great. So anyway, I’m still happy to qualify sixth. I thought that was a good first day.”
Da Costa said that he “wasn’t surprised to see three Porsches, one, two, three, because I know how their four-wheel drive works.”
When you have a reference like that it is hard to clear it from your mind and figure out the new landscape in one race, no matter how much sim and track testing you get away from the white heat of a race.
The race itself was very tight from da Costa, who is running with a new engineer for Season 12, Kazuto Shiomitsu.
Shiomitsu, a simulation and modelling guru who is a Cambridge University blue award winner, cut his racing teeth at Mercedes HPP and Toro Rosso before joining Jaguar from Williams Advanced Engineering at the end of 2022. Just prior to that Shiomitsu got race experience in Formula E as a performance engineer at Mercedes EQ in Stoffel Vandoorne’s title winning season.
“I think we did 99% of the race right,” said da Costa.
“I was very happy with how I raced. But even again, just to reiterate, it’s even difficult for me to follow the pre-race strategy meeting with how we structure our meeting and all that.
“So even going into the race, my brain’s already smoking with information overloaded. So, I guess here my experience comes into play and I’m trying to simplify things and calm things down for myself.
Honestly, I was very happy with how my engineer ran the race with me. It’s his first time too. And we did almost everything right. We can argue the attack mode laps were a lap late or early and stuff like that. But once the first safety car comes out, that massively compromises my end goal, which was what I was working towards.
Da Costa was caught in the same train as former teammate Pascal Wehrlein when the Safety Car came out and it was noticeable the similar ways of racing that the two had at that stage of the race.
“I could see what he was doing and he could see what I was doing,” adds da Costa.
“We took the attack mode on the same lap and we got caught out. So, without that safety car, I think it would have been between Jake (Dennis), Pascal and myself today. I was looking good on energy. A little bit better than Pascal. I have to double check with Jake, but for sure better than Pascal.
“I don’t want to say we would have won the race, but I think a podium was almost guaranteed and if not a top five. All of this is to say that I am very happy with how we’ve implemented it all and how we executed our day. Just a solid, nice first race.”
