With four races remaining in a very exciting 2022 season, the series came to the English capital for rounds 13 and 14 with the championship lead being tightly contested with four drivers being separated by 27 points. Could the double-header in London blow the title race wide open or end some of the title contenders' dreams of winning a third world title or their first world title. Couldthe London double-header see four contenders whittled down to two maybe three.
Going into qualifying it was an important weekend for the four title challengers, but at the end of group qualifying only one of the four challengers was able to progress into the duels. That driver to make it out of the group stage was championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne in the 5 Mercedes EQ car.
Jaguar TCS Racing driver Mitch Evans, DS-Tcheetah driver Jean Eric-Vergne and Rokit Venturi driver Eduardo Mortara all failed to get into the duel stages of qualifying whereas Vandoorne was able to make it to the final stage but missed out on pole position and the vital three points that would have seen him extend his championship lead. It was British driver Jake Dennis who ended up claiming pole for the London E-Prix in front of his home crowd but in truth the duel matchups had some unexpected matchups.
Vandoorne, Dennis, Nyck De Vries, Nick Cassidy, Oliver Askew, Sergio Sette Camara, Maximilian Guenther and Andre Lotterer were the ones that made it to the duels. The duels had a mix of racers that had been in them a numerous amount of times and a few racers that were in there for the first or second time. In the quarter final battles, it was Vandoorne vs Lotterer in the first encounter followed by Dennis vs Guenther, the battle of the former team-mates. The third battle was De Vries vs Cassidy and the final battle was Askew vs Sette-Camara.
Moving into the semi-finals, it was Vandoorne, De Vries, Dennis and Sette Camara who progressed. The battles this time were Vandoorne vs Sette Camara and De Vries vs Dennis. In the case of Sette Camara, wherever he finished it would be both a season best and a Formula E career best. Vandoorne was able to beat Sette Camara while Dennis was able to beat De Vries, setting up a Belgium vs England pole position showdown. Dennis was able to beat Vandoorne and get the three points for pole and the pole position trophy.
Once the session had been complete, there were several questions that needed to be asked: Where had Jaguar’s qualifying pace gone? Would we see Vandoorne extend his championship lead? Who is the favourite going into the race? How far up the grid could Lucas Di Grassi get after starting at the back? What sort of attack mode would we see used in the race? Could Dragon/Penske Autosport score their first points of the season?
Where had Jaguar’s qualifying pace gone?
According to people in the paddock, they believe that the Jaguar TCS Racing have the best overall package and that would be true given the recent results for the team especially in the hands of Mitch Evans. However, qualifying for round 13 showed that the team still had a problem with the car but it isn’t an obvious issue and on the other side of the garage Sam Brid, racing in his home race, has been struggling all season to extract the pace from the car. Both drivers qualified in P12 and P14, with Bird coming out on top.
Going into qualifying you would have expected the duels to consist of both Venturi’s and both DS-Tcheetah’s and Evans but once the first stage had been done and all the contenders not reaching the duels, it was clear that the Mercedes EQ team would go on to extend their points lead both in the drivers championship with Vandoorne and in the constructors championship.The only way that Vandoorne wasn’t going to extend his points lead was if his car broke down or he went for a move on Dennis and it ended in race ending contact.
Would we see Vandoorne extend his championship lead?
Given everything that happened in qualifying, it was safe to assume that Vandoorne was going to extend his championship lead of Eduardo Mortara, Mitch Evans and Jean Eric-Vergne. With 2nd place in the standings, Eduardo Mortara found himself starting in P9 and in the danger zone of being involved in a first corner pileup. Talking of a potential pileup, 3rd and 4th in the standings Mitch Evans and Jean Eric-Vergne were in a position where that could have happened with the pair starting alongside each other on the 7th row of the grid.
It was crucial for the title chasers to avoid getting involved in any accidents otherwise it would give Vandoorne a healthy points gap over 2nd place. Vandoorne starting second would all but indicate that the championship gap was going to extend but don’t forget all it would take was for a mechanical failure or a driver error that could see the Belgian driver score no points.
Who is the favourite going into the race?
It was quite hard to find a clear favourite for the win of the first race of the London E-Prix double-header and it was even harder after qualifying. Title contenders starting in the mid-pack, backmarkers qualifying up at the front of the grid.
You would think that the favourite was going to be any of the top three, Jake Dennis, Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck De Vries. Typically the energy usage of the Avalanche Andretti sees them fall down the pack but given how Dennis had been driving in the previous sessions, it had a feeling that it was going to be different with all of the support he was getting from the home crowd. Jake only has the one podium this season which is underwhelming given the speed that he has.
Vandoorne has had a lot of pace in the Mercedes EQ car this season. He has been a lot more consistent compared to previous seasons and there are different factors that can be attributed to his championship lead but one that will probably not be mentioned is his race engineer Stephen Lane. Lane came over to Mercedes EQ from Envision Racing and has always had a calm manner with the information that he passes on from the pit garage to the driver and has played a massive part in Vandoorne’s championship run.
De Vries may not be in championship contention but again has shown glimpses of pace with two wins at Diriyah race one and Berlin race two. It would appear that lady luck has swap sides in the Mercedes EQ garage, last year it always seemed that Vandoorne had no luck in the races compared to his team-mate De Vries. De Vries this season has had two wins, as mentioned and no other podiums compared to this stage last season where he had two wins and two other podiums after the first race in London.
How far up the grid could Lucas Di Grassi get after starting at the back?
We all know that Lucas Di Grassi is an emotional racer when things don’t go his way and in qualifying things didn’t go his way when after group qualifying he had his lap-times deleted for impeding both Mitch Evans and Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns. Usually if he had held up one driver then the stewards would delete one lap of the drivers, however given that this happened to two drivers meant that the stewards were led to delete all of the Brazilians lap times putting him at the back of the grid starting alongside Nio’s Dan Ticktum. In recent races, the Rokit Venturi has struggled and it looked set to happen again, at the start of the race Eduardo Mortara lost his entire front wing when going three-wide with Bird and Vergne which ended Bird’s race. Di Grassi also suffered some front-wing damage but unlike his team-mates, it wasn’t so bad. Di Grassi made his way up to P9 at the finish line but it wasn’t a good day for the Venturi team who had lost ground on Mercedes and DS-TCheetah in the constructors standings.
Going into the race it was unclear as to what sort of attack mode activation time the drivers were going to get. It is common that on a double-header weekend that race control likes to change the amount of times a driver needs to go through the attack mode activation zone and for how long the attack mode is used for. In a typical Formula E race every driver has to use the attack mode twice consisting of four minutes per mode. There was some thought that race control would either stick to its normal procedure or change it up and go for 2x8 minute attack modes or go to 1x8 minute attack mode. The final decision was that the drivers would get 2x6 minute attack mode giving the drivers about 4 and a half laps of attack mode.
Could Dragon/Penske Autosport score their first points of the season?
With the arrival of Antonio Giovinazzi to the team, all eyes were on him to deliver the points for the Dragon/Penske Autosport team given his few seasons in Formula 1. However this season has been a struggle for both the Italian racer and the team itself. They are the only team not to score a point in season 8 and after Sergio Sette Camara qualified in a stunning P4, you thought maybe today is the day that they end their points drought. However the race panned out differently than expected, Sette Camara had jumped Nyck De Vries with an early attack mode but in the latter stages of the race the similar tales of woe happened and the car fell back through the pack after using more energy than the cars around him and ultimately ran out of energy to finish the race and was classified as a DNF. Giovinazzi’s race went even worse, the Italian driver retired about halfway through the race and was given a 5-second time penalty for causing a collision but by the time that was issued, the Italian had already retired from the race.
What happened in the race?
When all five lights had gone out both drivers on the front row got away well and poleman Dennis came over to cover the inside line to prevent Vandoorne from taking the lead. Jaguar TCS Racing’s British driver Sam Bird wasn’t even able to complete the first lap after going three wide with Eduardo Mortara and fellow championship contender Jean Eric-Vergne which left Mortara needing to pit for a new front wing assembly.
In the early minutes of the race the Dragon/Penske Autosport driver of Sergio Sette Camara who made a very decisive pass on Mercedes driver Nyck De Vries for 3rd place but usually the efficiency of the Dragon/Penske team sees both drivers fall down the order. Then it was the two team-mates Vergne and Antonio Felix Da Costa that would next cause an incident as Vergne went into the back of Da Costa and forced the Portuguese racer offline but it never ended either driver's race.
After being passed earlier in the race, De Vries had to respond to an early attack mode undercut from Sette Camara and was forced to overtake the Brazilian driver for 3rd place. After the first round of attack modes, Nick Cassidy was the last driver to take his by some time which allowed him to open up his options for the later stages of the race.
The one biggest surprise during the race was how much the tyres were wearing out on both axles, particularly the rears out of the traction zones. It was noticeable on Maximilian Gunther's car when riding on board the car behind and also De Vries was struggling with the front axle after numerous lockups on the front right.
The stewards decided that they wanted to hand out a fair few penalties as Buemi received a 5 second penalty for a collision with Vergne, Frijns received a 5 second penalty for moving under braking, Antonio Giovinazzi received a 5 second penalty for a collision with NIO 333 racing's Oliver Turvey, Lucas Di Grassi received a 5 second penalty for a collision with Frijns.
Drama was to continue after the race had finished, in a late race battle between Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy and Mercedes EQ’s Nyck De Vries. De Vries was trying to defend the final step of the podium aggressively and in doing so he moved twice to defend the position which is not allowed in the FIA’s rule book. De Vries was slapped with a 5-second time penalty which saw him dropped off the podium and down in 6th place. The beneficiaries of the penalty awarded to De Vries were Cassidy, Avalanche Andretti’s rookie driver Oliver Askew and Mitch Evans. The penalty sent De Vries from P3 down to P6 after it was applied.
It’s no secret that Nissan have struggled this year with both drivers with only 22 points scored coming into round 13 for the London E-Prix. Both German racer Maximilian Gunther and Swiss racer Sebastian Buemi have struggled with the 2022 Nissan E-Dams car. Going into Round 13, Gunther only had one point scoring all the way back at race three in Mexico with a 9th place finish whereas team-mate Buemi has had a couple more points finish and had a season best finish of 5th place in the first race in New York.
Qualifying for round 13 was of mixed results for the team with Buemi qualifying in 15th spot and not progressing into the duels stage of qualifying. Gunther however was able to progress into the duels but ultimately didn't get past the quarter finals but did set a lap time that was faster than Andre Lotterer of Porsche and Envision Racing's Nick Cassidy.
Fast forward a couple of hours later and when the chequered flag was waving to signal the end of the E-Prix, it wasn't a pointless race with Gunther finishing in P8 and claiming four points while Buemi finished outside the points in P11.
In the drivers championship Buemi sits in 14th place with 20 points while Gunther sits in 19th place with 6 points at the end of round 13 and in the constructors standings Nissan E.Dams sit in 8th place on 26 points with three races to go.
Oliver Askew came into the Formula E paddock with a bit of expectation given that he had come over from America to race in Formula E with the Avalanche Andretti team. Askew burst onto the scene in 2019 by winning the Indy Lights championship and things went well for the young Floridian racer after scoring a 9th place finish in his debut race in Diriyah but then the results just weren’t coming for a majority of reasons but it was also the same with his team-mate Jake Dennis.
Fast forward 12 races, from scoring his first points in the series, onto round 13 at the London E-Prix where he would not only get his career best qualifying result of 5th place but he would also get his career best finish of 4th place. This was arguably Askew's best race in his rookie season after going on a long points drought that started off at the 2nd race in Diriyah.
It was a great race for Avalanche Andretti squad, with the team getting their best points return of the season with Dennis claiming 29 points (25 for the win, 1 for fastest lap and 3 for pole position) and Askew scoring 12 which moved the team onto 90 points in the constructors championship while the points return saw Dennis move onto 76 points and Askew move onto 14 points.
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