Facts & Figures: Statistics on the 2023 Formula E pre-season testing in Valencia

The official tests at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in preparation for the 2024 Formula E World Championship came to an end on Friday. We have taken a close look at the events in Valencia and prepared a detailed statistics article. Among other things, we look at the performance of all the drivers and teams.

Statistical features of the 2023 Valencia test sessions

• For the first time, Mitch Evans was fastest at pre-season testing. In the past four years, Maximilian Günther set the fastest lap time three times and Edoardo Mortara once. In the two years before that, Antonio Felix da Costa and Oliver Turvey set the fastest times in testing in Valencia.
• Sebastien Buemi remains the only champion to set the fastest time in pre-season testing after winning the title - he was fastest at Donington in 2016.
• 19 drivers undercut the previous track record of 1:25.127 minutes set by Günther on this track configuration in December 2022.
• Six rookies competed in Valencia. Three of them drove with a Nissan powertrain, two with a Stellantis and one with a Porsche. Cars with Jaguar, Mahindra and ERT power units were not driven by rookies.
• Buemi was the busiest driver in testing: 276 laps, the equivalent of 931.8 km were covered by the Envision driver in Valencia this year.
• On the other hand, Robert Shwartzman covered the least test kilometres: the rookie drove just 28 laps, or 94.5 kilometres, in the DS Penske on Tuesday morning until a battery problem stopped him.
• Of the regular drivers, Edoardo Mortara drove the least distance: 114 laps, the equivalent of 384.9 kilometres, less than half as much as Buemi. The main reason was the fact that Mortara had to sit out Friday after Mahindra only had one car available following the fire in the pit lane.
• McLaren was the busiest team in Valencia: 507 laps were completed by the team from Woking. Jake Hughes did 245 laps, Sam Bird 209 and Taylor Barnard another 53. That's the equivalent of 1711.6 kilometres, roughly the distance from the Circuit Ricardo Tormo to Dover.
• Mahindra, on the other hand, drove the least: 962.160 kilometres or 285 laps was all the Indians could do. However, the team will be allowed to make up for the test time lost due to the fire before the start of the season.
• All teams combined covered 4,914 laps during the test week, equivalent to 16,589.7 kilometres. Last year, there were 449 fewer laps, for a total of 15,073.8 kilometres.

Number of laps completed per driver

Number of laps completed per team

Driver & team performance analysis: Cassidy just ahead of Günther & Evans

For our performance analysis, we analysed the drivers' best times across all three sessions in Valencia. However, as the drivers were only allowed to run at 300 kW maximum power after the fire on Tuesday, we excluded the 350 kW laps of the first session.

The winner in the ranking is Nick Cassidy, who set the best time of 1:24.617 minutes on Friday. Hot on his heels is last year's fastest Maximilian Günther ahead of Cassidy's team-mate Mitch Evans. He is followed by Robin Frijns (Envision), Norman Nato (Andretti) and Oliver Rowland (Nissan) as well as Pascal Wehrlein (Porsche). This means that the first seven places are occupied by drivers from six different teams with four different power units.

In total, all 22 regular drivers were within 0.8 seconds of each other in the overall standings, with only 0.231 seconds separating the top 10. Even though not all teams are likely to have shown their full performance in Valencia, there are many indications that things will be even closer in 2024 than they were in the past season.

The rookie drivers are a bit behind in terms of performance - but none of them drove on Friday, when the fastest lap times were set. Gabriela Jilkova in particular clearly shows that she had never driven the car before she came to Valencia. Apart from Taylor Barnard, all the other rookies had previous experience in the Gen3 car.

The team order is Jaguar ahead of Maserati, then the customer Jaguar of Envision. This is followed by Andretti's customer Porsche ahead of factory Nissan and, at the same time, the factory Porsche. Behind is McLaren's customer Nissan ahead of DS, the factory Mahindra and the customer Mahindra of ABT. The slowest car on a single lap was the ERT.

Order of manufacturers: Jaguar >>> Stellantis >>> Porsche >>> Nissan >>> Mahindra >>> ERT

Intra-team lap time comparisons (regular drivers at 300 kW only)

When comparing the two teammates of a team, it is noticeable that the drivers at Porsche set almost identical best times. At ERT, Jaguar, ABT Cupra and Andretti, the differences are also less than 0.1 seconds. At Nissan, however, there was a clear performance difference in favour of Oliver Rowland. Max Günther was also significantly quicker than his new teammate Jehan Daruvala.