Jean-Eric Vergne’s emergence as a central player in the FIA Formula E Championship looked in doubt after a bitterly disappointing second season in which he partnered Sam Bird at the DS Virgin Racing team.
Vergne and the DS Virgin team principal Alex Tai had a cataclysmic falling out after the Buenos Aires EPrix in January 2016.
This came about after Tai had unfathomably ruled a virus compromised Vergne unfit to race, perhaps with one eye on inserting spectating local hero Jose-Maria Lopez in the seat. This went against the official FIA Medical Delegate who ruled Vergne fit after he largely recovered.
‘We didn’t speak after this episode, not one word,’ remembers Vergne. ‘He didn’t trust me and actively tried to get ‘Pechito’ (Jose-Maria Lopez) in to the car.
‘I had options to go back to Andretti after Buenos Aires because Michael knew the situation and wanted me back, but I was dissuaded by DS.
‘The next time I spoke to him (Tai) was at Sam Bird’s wedding but really the relationship was over that weekend in Argentina.’
From there Vergne held talks with Gildo Pastor at Venturi about buying in to the team but that came to nothing. Similar discussions with the erstwhile majority stakeholder of Team Aguri, Mark Faggionato, began to bare fruit though.
Major investment came from SECA, a sports marketing business based in Shanghai and owned by Chinese Media Capital. They had a deal formulated to invest in Formula E under condition it could also acquire a team.
In a high stakes poker game, Alejandro Agag, who had an eye on the team to potentially broker another Trulli/Jaguar style deal was essentially blocked by the Vergne axis. There then unfolded a mediation of sorts which saw the new ownership taken up by SECA, meaning that Vergne become a key part of its structure.
By August of 2016 the Techeetah team was officially born but its beginnings were frugal and far from glamourous. Not quite able to get access to their Donington Park unit, the team was forced to use a Castle Donington hotel room to strip its gearboxes down and a hotel lobby in Monaco as their technical office.
‘Where the team was and where it went to is one of the great stories I think,’ opines Vergne.
‘We did the first shakedown test in the car park at Donington and the first races were complete disaster but together we never lost faith.’
That faith was re-paid when significant milestones started to be hit. First points in Marrakech were followed by a victory in the final race of season three in Montreal.
Mark Preston the Team Principal and founder member of the original Super Aguri Formula E (SAFE) business, which raced under the Amlin Aguri and Team Aguri names in the first two campaigns, pulled off a masterstroke by securing a customer Renault powertrain for the final two seasons of Gen 1 competition.
It paid off handsomely and by season four, once the Techeetah team had got its collective operational act together, it was the team to beat.
Vergne scored a mighty pole position by taking the timing beam backwards at Hong Kong in the opening round as he over-estimated the adhesion limits of his car.
He then claimed a memorable win at the first ever Santiago EPrix, held on the tortuous streets of the Chilean capital, resisting his new teammate Andre Lotterer in a physical tussle which saw contact some alarming between the pair.
Further wins at Punta del Este, which replaced another cancelled Brazilian race – this time in Sao Paulo, and an emotional home win in Paris prepared his title charge. This was captured with a fourth win of the season and the final Gen 1 win at New York in July.
‘It was very tiring doing the championship, I had waves of emotions that were good and bad,’ says Vergne. ‘It was an amazing feeling to win the title but it was a major effort from many people to come from nothing to take it.’
There were many notable other moments in season four, including a popular breakthrough win for Daniel Abt in Mexico City and then a quick follow-up when he crushed the opposition at Audi’s home race in Berlin.
Mitch Evans claimed Panasonic Jaguar Racing’s first pole position at the Zurich EPrix, where racing returned to Switzerland after a 63 year absence.
Felix Rosenqvist’s star continued to ascend as he claimed two more wins at Hong Kong and Marrakech, but the Swede was spirited away to Indycar with Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of 2018.
Sam Bird maintained his impressive record of winning in every Formula E season by taking the first ever Rome EPrix on a track which became the acknowledged masterpiece of the calendar for its undulating challenge to car and driver.
