AUGUST 2014 TESTING TESTING BEHIND THE SCENES AT MAHINDRA RACING Mahindra Racing might be having fun, but the team isn’t playing season. We’ve been given unprecedented behind-the-scenes access it’s an impressive operation. GO BIG OR GO HOME “To succeed, you attract the most talented people – and then get out of their way.” So says SP Shukla, group executive board member at Indian corporation Mahindra & Mahindra and the chap at the very top of the tree as far as the company’s Formula E entry is concerned. Mumbai-headquartered Mahindra grossed more than $16bn in 2013 and employs 180,000 people across the globe. The decision to to be an amateur effort. It’s a slick unit, headed up by team principal Dilbagh Gill, with former F1 drivers Karun Chandhok and Bruno Senna in the hotseats, technical operations run by the uber-successful Carlin Motorsport – and the full support of Mahindra’s electric car division, Mahindra REVA. That arm of the company, which built a new plant in 2012 with capacity to churn out 30,000 vehicles a year, brings with it such a deep well of expertise in electric vehicle engineering that, asked how Mahindra will measure up against the array of renowned names and racing reputations on the Formula E grid, Gill merely quips: “Competition? What competition?” More importantly, given that Formula E is designed principally to advance road car tech, the relationship between Mahindra Racing and Mahindra REVA is no one way street. “We’re convinced that what we learn in Formula E will translate across to our road car business,” states Shukla. “In Formula E racing, we’ll be pushing the powertrain very hard, discharging and recharging the batteries over and over in a short space of time, working right at the limit of the technology. The knowledge we gain in Formula E will help us build better mass produced electric vehicles.” Mahindra is already working on its powertrain for the 2015 season, when the series will be opened up to constructors other than Spark. For now, however, Mahindra Racing has a far simpler mandate, says Gill: “We intend to win.”
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Ross Ringham Current E