Mahindra Racing technical director Josef Holden has revealed the latest set of technical regulations ahead of the 11th Formula E season has forced the team into a departure away from its traditional pre-season testing programme.
With the GEN3 Evo era just three months away, the teams are all currently putting the cars that will be the fastest-accelerating single-seaters in the world - capable of 0-60mph in just 1.82 seconds - through their paces.
In addition, the campaign marks the introduction of AWD (all-wheel drive), which will be available to drivers during the qualifying Duels, their mandatory Attack Mode activations, and at the start of each E-Prix. This latest addition to the series has resulted in changes to testing plans.
Confirming that "pre-season testing is progressing strongly", Holden added: “Of the 16 days we’re entitled to as a manufacturer from Formula E, we’ve parallelised how we work with reliability and performance testing, especially where four-wheel drive is concerned because that’s such a major factor and change for Season 11.
“So, whereas normally you’d focus on reliability first, and then move on to performance, we’ve had a 60-40 split on those. Having said that, we’ve already completed thousands of kilometres on our race-intent hardware.
“In comparison to the same stage in testing ahead of GEN3, which everybody knows had a difficult gestation period, we didn’t even have that race-intent hardware with us until the combined Valencia test. If you take the energy management system we were running, it was also new and delivered to us in Valencia.
“Realistically, we’re significantly further ahead than we were before. From the test days we’ve run so far, we’re averaging 500 kilometres a day, which is among some of our best testing to date.
"Now we just need to take that through to a track against our competitors, as on a private day, you’re only able to compare to yourself. We’ll see where that puts us.”
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Mahindra pushing car "to breaking point"
The testing programme has resulted in an intense workload for reserve and development driver Jordan King who has been pushing the car to its limits in preparation for the running to later be conducted by race drivers Nyck de Vries and Edoardo Mortara.
Insisting that progress has so far been "very good", but with "more to be done”, King said: “We had a few teething problems at the start with everything new on the car, but that’s to be expected and is, in many respects, the first priority when we go testing, to resolve those.
“Now we’re able to test everything more rigorously and push it to breaking point. The main goal at the moment is to get mileage, push the machinery to the limits and see what it’s capable of. I think we’ve achieved all of that."
Season 11 of Formula E begins in Sao Paolo on December 7.
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