Mahindra’s split with Carlin has been on the cards for quite some time, Current E can reveal. The decision had been made far earlier in the season, when the team’s performance failed to live up to early expectations.

In an exclusive interview, Mahindra team boss Dilbagh Gill told Current E: “We had a one year contract which terminated at the last race. It was nothing acrimonious. There’s no finger pointing.”

Mahindra is the Indian team that had envisaged itself as a solid mid-field player in season one, challenging the big boys for the top spots and relying on home-grown engineering skills borrowed from other parts of its manufacturing empire (“We want to be the Williams of Formula E,” Gill told us previously). In seasons two and three, it expects to integrate more expertise from its electric vehicle company and become a front-runner.

Carlin is the uber-successful single-make British specialist that has made the careers of many motor racing superstars. The Surrey-based outfit, run by Trevor Carlin, provided hands-on technical operations for Mahindra, as well as simulator facilities and marketing.

It was a relationship that worked very well throughout preseason testing and into the first two races, before turning into a frustrating and fruitless campaign.

“We were very fast at the beginning of the season but then we took a dip and never recovered,” said Gill. “At the start of the season we were one of the fastest teams. In Beijing and Malaysia, we had good qualifying and race pace. From Punta we took a dip and other teams caught up. By Berlin, we were totally lost. On the energy side of things, we were always pretty strong, especially Bruno. On the chassis side of things, we weren’t as good.”

The Indian team boss is keen to emphasise that no one is blaming Carlin for the team’s demise, which sees Mahindra ranked eighth in the teams’ standings after failing to score any points at all in five races.

“I take a share of the responsibility,” Gill says. “We weren’t resourced adequately. No one expected the championship to become so serious, so quickly. What Carlin did to get us set up was amazing. I have so much respect for those guys and I really enjoyed working with them. They did a tremendous job at the start. The fact is that we didn’t perform as well as we wanted to in season one so we thought we should look at a different way of doing things in season two.”

That different way of doing things looks set to be the Campos team that also runs NextEV TCR, which delivered Nelson Piquet the first Formula E drivers’ title. “China is doing very different things with the powertrain to us, so there should be no crossover,” Gill says of potentially gaining secrets from the garage with the grey and yellow cars.

Mahindra has begun making direct hires, including senior-level engineers, so that the second season entity will be less reliant on its technical partner.

No decision has yet been taken about drivers for the second season, although Gill indicated that the team has several options to explore. Mahindra is busy with its track testing programme for its 2015-16 powertrain, which will complete before the end of the month.