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There's a positive atmosphere in the middle of the Atacama Desert as the Extreme E season winds down – NEOM McLaren has had an up-and-down year, but Sporting Director Gary Paffett is in an upbeat mood, with the team ending the campaign on an upwards trajectory and looking ahead to 2024…

Carrying momentum into the season

We ended our first season in Extreme E on a high, with a podium finish in Uruguay giving us momentum into 2023, but with the unpredictable nature of the series and an overall improvement across the field, carrying that strong form into this year was never a foregone conclusion.

“I think it’s always going to be difficult,” Gary admits. “You look at this championship and the way it works, you can never guarantee that you’re going to be able to get results – there’s so much that can happen. But I think it’s certainly been more difficult than we expected it would be.

“In Uruguay, we finished with a podium, and we felt like it was well-deserved – we crossed the line first in Chile last year, but finished fifth due to penalties - so we had good performances and we had to just clean up and become more consistent. We felt like we had a chance of getting consistent results, and that hasn’t been the case.”

In order to challenge for the overall event win in Extreme E, you need to be in the top half of the qualifying standings – qualifying being decided by heat race results rather than lap times as is the case in circuit racing categories. The team was left in the Redemption Race in six of the nine rounds we contested, unable to challenge for the overall victory in those, regardless of the team’s outright speed.

“A few of the races we were the sixth-best car from the qualifying races so just missed out on the Grand Final and the one time we made it, we finished second in Scotland, so we got the result,” Gary says.

“It’s been that kind of year where I think we have to hold our hands up and say we haven’t been consistently quick enough, but we’ve also had our fair share of bad luck. It’s all about getting into the Grand Final and we just haven’t made that enough times so far.”

Familiarity provides mixed results

The team also got into the final at the season finale in Chile, a venue where we showed strongly last year, winning on the road until a penalty for hitting a waypoint flag dropped us off the rostrum.

“Everyone had been there before – that’s the thing you see in every championship if you go back to the same place, everyone is more experienced, everyone knows more about what’s going to happen, and everyone kind of narrows down on the perfect sort of car, the perfect sort of driving,” says Gary. “Of course, we’ve got good data and we’ve got good references and good emotions from last year, but we need to just focus on trying to do the best we can and seeing where we end up.

“New events are quite nice, but it is nice to come back to somewhere familiar where you’ve got data, you know the course, the drivers know the course and they’re not starting green every time, somewhere we’ve got some experience already.”

But familiarity wasn’t always kind. Another returning venue was Sardinia – not only returning from previous seasons, but featuring twice in this campaign too, and the second of those proved to be tough for the team. After a heavy crash there last year and a less-than-fruitful visit to the Italian island in the summer, the team doubled-down on its efforts for the return in the spring. But with two heavy crashes for Emma Gilmour and her stand-in Tamara Molinaro, that extra effort went without reward.

“The second Sardinia was incredibly disappointing,” Gary concedes. “The effort that went into that one event… we did so much prep work and the drivers worked so hard to make sure they were ready for the event.

“We tested the week before on the event site and really focused on the points that we thought were going to make the difference, and then we got really unlucky in the first practice session and then we had the massive crash and you’re just on the back-foot from that point and recovering from there is so difficult.”

Getting over the mental setbacks

Showing flashes of speed but then being slapped with poor luck is difficult to overcome, but Gary says that the team isn’t one to dwell on forces outside its control.

“You just have to keep going,” he insists. “It is frustrating for everyone when you put all the effort in that we’ve been putting in and then don’t get the results out of it, but you have to get your head down and keep going, trusting the process, trusting that what you’re doing is the right thing, and just keep pushing. You can’t necessarily wait for good luck but you hope that things go your way the next time.

“You’re always looking for ways to improve. No one’s ever perfect, so every time we go away from an event, you don’t dwell on what happened so much, you look at what we could have done better, how we can improve, and we’ve been improving as a team every race, whether it’s operational or just logistical, trying to make the team more efficient and work better.

“I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made, but obviously we haven’t had the results that sort of reflect that progress.”

Lots to celebrate

While our Extreme E trophy cabinet might not have expanded at the rate we would have hoped - our only podium coming at our home race in Scotland - Gary says there’s still plenty to celebrate after the team went into the season with a number of wholesale changes behind the scenes.

“Tanner and Emma have been fantastic all year,” he says. “Through the frustrating points they’ve really kept their heads down and kept pushing on, kept focused on what they need to do and improving step-by-step. Scotland was a great result.

“Both drivers did an incredible job in Scotland in the races, and we came away with a very deserved result so that showed performance and showed both drivers driving really hard, really aggressively. That is what we can do, so we’ve done it, we’ve shown we can do it.”

Expanding on the wider operation, Gary adds: “I’m proud of the whole team, everyone in the team and how hard they’ve all worked. We’ve restructured the team a lot this year with the mechanics team especially coming on board – pretty much all of the mechanics have changed this year from last year.

“Everyone in the team here is new to XE, even though they’re experienced in Formula E. The way they’ve worked and the effort that they’ve put in, especially over the last couple of events, is just incredible, the way they just get it done and don’t give up.

“It’s been incredibly tough for them, working on a completely new car and new series to them. The whole team, the whole team spirit, and how hard everyone is working, is the thing I’m most proud of.”

What’s next?

The 2023 season was the team’s first as part of the new NEOM McLaren Electric Racing setup, which was formed after we expanded into Formula E, joining the all-electric single-seater series ahead of the 2023 season. The two series being a part of the NEOM McLaren Electric Racing Team allows them to be better integrated into the wider McLaren company, benefitting both the Extreme E team itself and other facets of the papaya family.

“We had a lot of interest in the championship, especially from the Formula E side of things,” Gary says. “We were able to get a few of them over to a test that we did in Wales mid-season. We’ve had some support from some engineering there as well, and they find it really interesting to be able to look at something which is completely different to what they’re used to.

“It’s definitely of interest to everyone and I think everyone that’s been able to see it and get access to it thinks it’s pretty crazy and what we do is certainly extreme.”

NEOM McLaren will return to Extreme E in 2024, albeit with a new driver line-up following the announcement that Tanner and Emma will depart after two years with the team. Their replacements will be announced in due course.