The NEOM McLaren Formula E Team’s partnership with electronics giant TDK hit its stride in Formula E during the latest round, and the team came away from Jeddah with a double podium success.
The Bicester-based outfit sit just one point behind manufacturer and powertrain supplier Nissan in the teams’ standings, while driver Taylor Barnard claimed a double podium in Saudi Arabia earlier this month as well as becoming the youngest polesitter in Formula E’s history.
The upsurge in fortunes for NEOM McLaren in the all-electric championship coincides with a new partnership with electronics corporation TDK.
Originally founded in 1935, the Japanese company has become an internationally recognised brand having been renowned for creating cassette tapes and is now an industry leader in data and technologies.
“We made a strategic technology partnership that means we can also contribute to the performance of the team utilising our core technologies,” said Noboru Saito, president and CEO of the TDK Corporation.
“From TDK’s point of view, the automotive industry field is and will be one of the major business fields and in this automotive field EVs will be the biggest focus.
“Therefore, not only just simply being a partner of the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team but also creating a strategic partnership, linking to our core technology, contributing to the actual transformation of society is crucial.
“The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship as a series is going to continue being a major part of the green transformation and also digital transformations.
“Data plays a major role for racing, and we have also a sensor business in addition to the electronic components.
“Therefore, there’s a huge link in terms of the technology and also a very good relation to the environmentally friendly topics, so many areas match our direction of strategy.”
The introduction of the new GEN3 Evo machines for the current 2024-25 season means TDK has been able to integrate many of its technologies into NEOM McLaren’s latest challenger.
While the focus remains on the current season, TDK and the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team hope to continue the partnership into the future where it can have an impact not only in Formula E, but beyond.
“These are incredibly complex machines and yet the competition is incredibly fierce, which means you're always looking for those marginal gains, you're always looking for things which are going to bring you forward faster than the competition,” said team principal of the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team, Ian James.
“Within the TDK portfolio of hardware that they have, that's integrated very much within the power unit. It means that we're able to build on the efficiencies that we have, and efficiency is incredibly important.
“But beyond that it's reliability as well, so you want any component within the system to be able to perform reliably time and time again.
“That's the here and now, but I think the important bit is actually what's coming in the future.
“It's the dialogue that we're going to be having over the coming weeks and months and years to actually say, what do we want to achieve in the future and what's going to help us unlock that performance going forward in a way that allows us, quite frankly speaking, to beat our competitors.”
