Rock bottom to frontrunner: A sharp Formula E turnaround explained

Mahindra's painful previous two Formula E seasons feel so far behind it now - and its deserved elevation to an exceptional third in the teams' standings seems to be down to smarts as much as stealth.

It's still early days, but as the Indian manufacturer prepares to head to Tokyo, a track its re-emergence can be traced back to last March, it is now a team that feels as if it has just taken a massive leap onto a giant springboard over the last few months.

Nyck de Vries' second position in the first Monaco E-Prix was the team's best result since Oliver Rowland took second in Seoul in August 2022, 38 races ago. As famines go, Mahindra's has been particularly sparse.

Mahindra in the Gen3 era

2023: 10th, 41 points
2024: 10th, 47 points
2024-25: 3rd, 91 points*

*season ongoing

But now the odd peaks of isolated performance of 2024 have been replaced by a consistency this season that has helped Mahindra outscore teams including DS Penske, Jaguar and Andretti that it was previously in complete deference to. As a consequence, it's looking down upon those rivals from that lofty third place.

You can look to the arrival of Jeremy Colancon, the back office expertise of Tony Ross, or the slow rebuilding of a crumbling legacy inherited by Frederic Bertrand for Mahindra's re-emergence as not only a relevance but also a force to challenge for wins and podiums again. It's a combination of all these things.

The mere fact that it was able to haul itself back after the nadir of 2023 - a season when it had to withdraw both its cars and customer team Abt's from a whole event due to poor reliability - should be noted as some kind of special fortitude case study on emerging from a racing rock bottom.

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But the important point is that the team never lost faith, even though its future could look very different to now.

That's the counterintuitive aspect of this resurgence. Mahindra is expected to drop from being a powertrain manufacturer in its own right to a customer team or having a 'white label' deal with another supplier when Gen4 begins for the 2026-27 season.

So perhaps now is the time it can not just thrive but also prove to future suppliers that it is a team on the rise to be in a great position come the new ruleset.

That's all for the future. For now, Mahindra is enjoying long forgotten moments in the sun.

Tellingly, both De Vries and his boss Frederic Bertrand were quick to contextualise the fifth position that followed on Sunday in Monaco, when it seemed initially De Vries would be leaving the event with a double podium. Any disappointment was quickly clipped.

"We shouldn't be upset with a second and a fifth," De Vries told The Race.

"I think the attack modes were just a bit off. The first one was too late, the second was too early. We had a nice gap to the guys behind because we were more, I guess, orientated on a wet track."

His pace was strong in the beginning, but then the safety car was deployed for Nico Mueller's stranded Andretti Porsche, which meant others who were optimising for drier conditions were able to exploit not only the accordion-like closing of gaps but also the final phase of the race when De Vries struggled with his car on the drying asphalt.

"It was a kind of an accumulation of different circumstances that didn't quite allow us to capitalise on our starting position [of second]," added the 2021 champion. "And that includes our own course around attack mode, etc. But, ultimately, we got a decent result."

The crucial moment, when De Vries grabbed the lead for about 20 metres into Tabac before glancing the wall, was all part of the equation. Quite how he and Jean-Eric Vergne didn't collide heading into the Swimming Pool chicane is difficult to explain as they were more or less interlocked for a good few seconds.

If De Vries had managed to stay ahead of Oliver Rowland then that double podium would have been on but when he ran out of attack mode he was a sitting duck for Nick Cassidy and Antonio Felix da Costa to demote.

Still, the last time Mahindra bagged more than 40 points from a double-header weekend was in London in July 2021, almost four years ago. That fact should say it all when it comes to one of Formula E's most popular teams' well-deserved resurgence.

Brutal on track, zen on the radio

You'll usually get many competitors of De Vries having a dig or a moan about his sometimes marginal, sometimes brutal defensive driving.

You may question whether Dan Ticktum is a reliable witness or not but his appraisal of going wheel-to-wheel with De Vries in Monaco last weekend was pretty forthright.

"That's all Dev [De Vries]! He's a dirty, dirty driver. Ran me off the track. No space as always, put me on the kerb on entry," said Ticktum.

Yet, it was De Vries who came off much better and those spiky tactics rarely translate to the cockpit when it comes to conversation with his equally tranquil engineer Tom Bayles.

Clipped and actually military-esque, the information is staccato. Ideal for Formula E. Think of it as being as far removed from a Ticktum radio chat as you can possibly get. Zen De Vries is the anti-Ticktum when it comes to radio comms.

"I don't really swear, I don't really shout, but everybody's different," said De Vries. "There's always a fine balance between receiving enough and not too much [information].

"Generally speaking, I'm very happy with our [with Bayles] collaboration and our communication. I think both parties are quite calm, and I appreciate it."

Team boss Bertrand not only appreciates De Vries' strong style at the wheel but also his overall calm and analytical approach as he sees it pays dividends more often than not.

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"I believe the full field is like this [brutal in battle] in Formula E more or less and Nyck, for us, is something where probably the drivers complain more than me," said Bertrand.

"But up to now, he always had a car which came back very nicely. I think, for example, he could have gone a bit further in defending against Da Costa and Cassidy. But he was smart enough not to try. I think he's smart in his approach.

"It's important, especially in these races, to keep your emotions consistent and flat. The race is long. It's short, but it's long and you've got to be patient."