“Relationship is the key word, right?”
Right! That’s Sylvain Filippi talking to Formula E Notebook recently when pushed about his team – Envision – and its continuing belief in the customer model that Formula E and the FIA has cultivated and now absolutely must protect for the Gen4 period.
Envision has had three manufacturer partners in its history, of which it started as Virgin Racing. From 2015 to 2018 it hooked up successfully with DS, bringing five victories. Then came Audi in 2018 until 2022. That too was prosperous, again with five wins.
Then came Jaguar. A nightmare start with a worrying accident for Sebastien Buemi at Valencia in November 2022 was followed by a near withdrawal of the Jaguar cars at Mexico City. But from there a remarkable turn-around came. An eventual team’s title thanks to Buemi, but mostly Nick Cassidy, saw the team celebrate a momentous achievement.
Envision therefore know how to get the best from its manufacturer supplier and working hand in glove with them, while not always being smooth, has delivered sporadically.
“We did something with Audi in Gen2, and I remember having discussions with Allan (former Audi FE Team Principal – McNish, and sometimes we were great friends, and sometimes he was a little bit stressed with me but it’s normal,” Filippi says.
“With Jaguar we won (in 2023), then they won (in 2024), and now we’re in a place where we’ve got to be in this together. We’ve got to do this part together. Our customer team model has pros and cons. Pros is that we know what our limit is, our perimeter. We can do what we control really well, and that’s what our team has always been good at.
“But also, we need a good relationship with the manufacturer, and we need a good understanding of the car. So yeah, to be competitive, you’ve got to nail all of this. And it’s not easy.”
Filippi is correct. The manufacturer and customer dynamic is fraught with hurdles and pratfalls. Ask Andretti and its peak and trough existence with Porsche. It’s not just the sharing of hardware and some aspects the IP of that, but it’s also about culture, human opinion and the complexity of melding all those things into one channel – winning.
And of course, there can only be one winner. Envision and Jaguar probably has the best of those relationships up and down the customer/manufacturer paddock. Its set to continue, meaning that Envision will race with the Big Cat potentially for eight seasons, a record in Formula E.
Looking back on the Jaguar relationship, which sees a convenient 30-minute trip between the two factories – Envision in Silverstone, Jaguar in nearby Kidlington – Fillipi is pragmatic yet still ambitious for the team he manages for the Envision owner, Lei Zhang.
“Initially, obviously, we went through phases with the relationship where it was mega, and then we had some difficulties, and now I think we are in a good place,” he says.
“We’ve been through a lot, so we understand also their limitation better, our limitation better. But it’s true that the championship has evolved so much. Now the cars are very complex. So now I find it’s maybe a bit more difficult than it used to be because the cars are so complex.
“The fact that we have stability on the second year, it helped us. If there were so many big changes every year, it would be very difficult as a customer team because you get a lot less testing. So even if you have an open book with Jaguar, which we have, the fact that you don’t drive yourself (in testing), you don’t have your guys actually running the session, you don’t learn the same amount.
“So, the stability of year two is somehow helping us. If we had that same change every year, it would be very difficult. But on the other hand, this is what you get, and the good thing is you try to get the most of what you get. You don’t constantly invent new things.”
That is a fundamental part of why Jaguar and Envision are set to work together again in Gen4. With Sebastien Buemi under contract and Joel Eriksson bedding in nicely to the Envision way, the green army is set to go marching on in Gen4, where it might just become a bit more than its current image of being a very dangerous underdog.
