The Envision teams; best season to date was in 2022-23, the first of the Gen3 era when chaos reigned and uncertainty over the project caused a huge degree of concern and scrutiny.
Envision though knuckled down and made the most of it. It was far from easy though. A big accident for Sebastien Buemi in pre-season testing in November 2022 came just before the team almost withdrew (along with Jaguar) from the first Gen3 race at Mexico City in January 2023 due to safety concerns relating to the lack of rear traction brakes.
Another big accident came for Buemi at Cape Town a month later and at that stage it didn’t look too rosy. Then everything clicked and with Jaguar’s support the team, especially with Nick Cassidy, went on a golden streak that included wins at Monaco, Berlin, Portland and London, to secure the team’s title.
That though as the peak. But the question that is tempting to ask is…..could they do it again in Gen4. And if it’s more difficult is that because the manufacturer landscape is evolving with Porsche planning four factory cars and Stellantis tweaking their model with a bespoke licenced team via Opel GSE.
The pertinent question here is what a strong and proven customer team like Envision makes of these new challenges it faces?
“For sure, we don’t want formally to be like DTM when it was very obvious with two and three manufacturers running eight cars each, and that’s basically a whole big orchestration,” opined Filippi.
“I don’t think we want Formula E to be that, and I don’t think it will be. But that’s why you need strong independent teams. You need enough manufacturers and enough customer teams, and so that can’t happen.
“So, I’m not concerned or worried or whatever, but it’s true that it’s the first time we are potentially have it, so it’s correct address it.”
That is what the FIA has done with a directive now that manufacturer and customer team orchestrations are forbidden. Policing that though will not be easy.
Envision and Jaguar have been far less overt than some others with their racing practice. But despite some rough times in Season 10 particularly, the harmony between Envision and Jaguar is decent now and the renewed deal evidences this.
But the bad news for Envision is that the likelihood of a 2023 repeat is much less likely. The confusion around the Gen3 project and avenues for clever engineering and strategical nous from a driver like Cassidy is unlikely to combine again in quite the same way.
Envision will have ambitions to at least try, but with a full cost cap now in place and similar testing limitations, a reliance on the manufacturer mothership is greater than ever.
But Envision is preppin’!
Building for the future
Sebastien Buemi has already driven the Jaguar Gen4 car at Almeira in Spain earlier this year. He enjoyed the experience and wants to race in Gen4, although circumstances beyond his and Envison’s control may deny that plan.
Irrespective of the drivers, Envision is pushing ahead nicely but Filippi reckons it is way too early to gauge any early form.
“I don’t pay too much attention right now, because it’s still in the curve and they are working on reliability on the new systems, the hydraulics, the diff, all this new stuff,” said Filippi.
“My engineers are on it, and it’s going to be interesting once this season is finished, and everybody will have done a bunch of days, and it’ll become a bit clearer. At the moment, I don’t even know who’s running what, and is it the final spec or not.
“Jaguar have a good testing program. It’s a lot of days that they have to do, so it’s going to be super busy between now and August, and then September, October, it is going to be flat out.”
There will be a very different look to the Envision HQ at Silverstone later this year as an expansion plan that includes a new state-of-the-art simulator comes on stream.
That will be a tangible growth metric in Envision’s strategy to be able to compete with manufacturers going forward in to the Gen4 era. Visual evidence of it is already there with multiple skips outside its Silverstone base as a new workshop and simulator are being prepared.
“We’re trying to be a bigger team within cost care restrictions,” says Filippi.
“The next few months are crazy for us because we have Gen4 prep, we have the freight logistics, which is a big job for the hybrid sea freight model. We will have four sets of everything and we’ll be building all of that.
“On top of that we are building a brand new workshop, as well as installing a new simulator, We started building it last week, so it’s all happening and then we get the new simulator in September /October time.”
