In Tokyo, a year ago, Taylor Barnard learned a hard lesson from Edoardo Mortara, who fed Barnard’s McLaren in to the Turn 2 wall.
That lesson could be paraphrased as ‘calm it kid, we’re in charge here.’
As Barnard climbed from his crumpled Nissan he already knew two things. Firstly, he would try not to put himself in such a vulnerable position again, especially when racing a hard case like Mortara on a street track. Secondly, he’d meet ‘fire with fire’ because if showing weakness in Formula E battle clearly gets punished.
All this was set against the backdrop of his team, NEOM McLaren, having a very dank future and his manager Paul Mueller looking for a new deal for his client. At this stage, last May, Formula E Notebook understands that Barnard was in fact already signed.
Also, over that weekend in Tokyo, Barnard swiped the barrier at the tricky Turn 16 in FP1, causing his crew a late night in rebuilding the car. He recovered magnificently to line up an excellent fourth and maintain his one lap form that had already seen him claim a maiden pole at Jeddah.
But the Mortara incident, while not quite a full watershed moment, did influence Barnard, perhaps even subconsciously. A year on and perhaps it’s even had a direct outcome on his racing. So he’s no shrinking violet when it comes dishing it out now.
His DS Penske integration has been strong and his day to day team boss Phil Charles is more than just happy with him. “Taylor is an amazing combination of knowing when to be smooth and also knowing when to push the car and / or work the tyres to get them in window,” Charles told FEN earlier this season.
For a driver so inexperienced, moving from one set of manufacturer hardware (Nissan) to another (Stellantis) adding to a culture change from McLaren to Penske was no easy task to navigate. Yet, Barnard has done it very well.
But he’s done it at a time when, in the last season of Gen3, the Stellantis technical package is showing that it is good, but only good, and not great like Jaguar and Porsche consistently is, and Mahindra and Nissan mostly is. If you spend more time trying to battle your way out of the midfield rather than the pace taking you through it easily, then there is a propensity for incidents to increase. That’s what is happening with Barnard.
That means, despite the strong one lap pace, over a race distance it’s a struggle. DS Penske often seem to be on the backfoot this season and that is clearly frustrating both Barnard and his teammate Maximilian Guenther.
That vexation saw Barnard rack up three penalty points in Monaco. One for pitlane speeding, one for his clash with Norman Nato at the Anthony Nogues corner and a final one for wiping out Jean-Eric Vergne, the driver he replaced at DS Penske, at the Nouvelle Chicane.
In addition to those incidents, Barnard also dropped it at Portier with a way too chancy attempt to overtake Mitch Evans. He was lucky he didn’t wipe Evans out there and then, instead effectively ending his competitive race in the barriers alone.
Barnard on his bruising Monaco Sunday
“You could, in my position right now, complain massively about the stewards,” Barnard told FEN in Monaco.
“However, with this kind of carnage racing, it’s very unfair to put your finger on them and blame them. It’s just the kind of racing that we have and there needs to be some way to reduce the amount of craziness going on.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think sometimes we have the most amazing wheel-to-wheel racing that you can find anywhere on the planet. But in races like this, it’s just way too much.
“It’s way too much carnage, people crashing into each other left and right and the penalties are questionable sometimes. But again, like I said, when you’ve got 20 plus investigations at the end of the race, for them to make the right decision every single time is difficult. I’m not going to put my finger on anyone.”
When asked if Formula E needs the kind of mad-house racing and seemingly tactical contact, Barnard was as candid as ever, saying that “it’s not what the championship wants, it’s not what the fans want. It’s also extremely difficult to understand where you are, what’s going on, the energy, the attacks.
“When it’s so chaotic, how you fix that, I have no idea. I’m not the person to try and give a solution, but I think it was very obvious in this race that it was just way too much,” he concluded.
Barnard isn’t wrong about the brutal racing which sometimes boils over in to unfair racing. It likely won’t continue in to Gen4, in fact in many ways it just can’t, but drivers such as Barnard, Joel Eriksson and Pepe Marti are finding it as hard to deal with as even an established ace like Stoffel Vandoorne did a few seasons ago.
Why Barnard has 10-place Sanya grid drop
If Barnard gets pole at Sanya later this month he won’t start from there after receiving a 10-place grid drop in total for his Nato and Vergne incidents in Monaco.
A five place penalty for each was dished out by the stewards, a sanction that they have at their disposal under Article 16.3 of the sporting regulations that state that a driver finishing outside of the top ten ‘will’ receive a grid drop penalty for the next race. That ‘will’ is important because it used to be a ‘may’. That discretion was lifted ahead of the present season meaning that it was effectively a slam-dunk pen for Barnard.
“Unfortunately, I have a ten place grid penalty because my two ten seconds were converted into that even though I finished the race,” said Barnard.
“Again, you could blame the stewards, but with them being so busy, it’s hard for me to say that. It says in the regulations that if you’re not in the top ten, they can do that if they want to.
“It feels a bit harsh considering the move I did on Evans was risky. But when I have twenty seconds, I thought, why not? I’m just going to try it and if it works, then maybe I can finish in the top ten. There was a massive gap already behind me and he was very slow, so tried my best.
Barnard is an intelligent guy. He’s not a heart on sleeve, all or nothing merchant. Perhaps it’s too easy to think of him as a completely established Formula E racer when in fact he’s only done one full season. So, it’s clear that while he naturally defends himself, he’s also self-critical too.
“Obviously, I ended up in a crash and because of that, I’ve now ended up with a ten place grid penalty, which is unjust, I feel,” he says.
“I won’t complain too much. I need to work a little bit on myself, for example, with JEV. Sometimes it’s better to just say a bit less and work on yourself.”
Additional reporting by Georgia Williams
