ABB FIA FORMULA E 2022 SABIC LONDON E-PRIX RACE 2

Round 14 of the ABB FIA Formula E 2022 season saw the series return to the Excel Center for race 2 of the double-header weekend in the English capital, London. After an exhilarating race the day before, all eyes were on the second race to see if it could deliver the same hard racing and the same surprise results.

Getting into the venue for the third and final practice of the weekend, at 8 am Sunday with a load of people also getting in early to watch the practice session. Once the practice session had started then there was more drama in that one session than there was the day before, with Dragon/Penske Autosport’s Antonio Giovinazzi having an early spin at turn 5 but didn’t do any damage to the car and his team-mate Sergio Sette Camara was quick on the scene and gave his team-mate a wave.

Turn 1 is always a frustrating corner given that whatever line you take into it you then need to carry all the way to turn 5, it’s also a corner where you can expect plenty of lockups from drivers and the first driver of the day to experience the lockup and go into the run-off area was Avalanche Andretti’s Oliver Askew with 14 minutes left in the session. Sette Camara was also another victim of the turn 1 run-off trying to overtake Sebastian Buemi on the outside but locked up.

It was a scruffy session for Rokit Venturi’s Eduardo Mortara. His season promised a lot of speed from the car being at the top of the times for most of the session but was filled with multiple spins, the first being at turn 9. He just managed to keep it out of the wall but was almost collected by the DS-Techeetah of Jean-Eric Vergne and it could have been a session-ending incident for both drivers. Mortara would also be involved in another moment this time actually hitting the wall at turn 11 by taking too much speed into turn 10 and lost the back-end of the car which ultimately ended his practice session with under 2 minutes left in the session.

Just like in every other session, the field was separate by a very small margin but it was Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy who finished fastest followed by the other DS-Techeetah of Antonio Felix Da Cost and Robin Frijns. Sette Camara followed up from Saturday's one-lap pace with a 4th place finish heading into qualifying for the E-Prix.

Qualifying:

Group One

Fast forward an hour and a half to the group stages of qualifying then group one went first and it was a tail of woe for the championship contenders Eduardo Mortara and Stoffel Vandoorne failed to make it to the duel knockouts with championship leader Vandoorne starting on the 7th row of the grid while Mortara, who had lost 2nd in the standings, would start on the 9th row of the grid. Both drivers made a mistake on their flying laps with Vandoorne having a double front lockup into turn 1 while Mortara made the same mistake but into turn 16. The drivers that advanced into the quarter-finals were Jake Dennis, Antonio Felix Da Costa, Nyck De Vries, and Oliver Askew.

Group Two

Group two qualifying took place, and all the title contenders failed to make it through to the quarter-finals. Vergne, 4th in the standings, got pushed out by a fantastic lap by Dragon/Penske Autosport’s Antonio Giovinazzi. Vergne therefore would start on the 5th row of the grid while fellow title contender Mitch Evans would start on the 7th row of the grid and alongside title rival Vandoorne. The drivers that advanced into the quarter-finals were Lucas Di Grassi, Giovinazzi, Nick Cassidy, and Sebastian Buemi. For Giovinazzi, wherever he was going to qualify was going to be a career-best for the Italian driver.

Quarter-Final Duels:

Moving onto the duels and the first quarter-final to take place was Dennis vs Buemi, a common theme was to occur during the duels and that was drivers battling it out for the first time. The clear favourite was the Brit Dennis given what he achieved in Saturday’s sessions and the group stage of qualifying and that was the case with the Brit going 0.536 faster than the Swiss driver and therefore progressed into the semi-finals.

The second duel saw Da Costa face Cassidy, the pair have already faced off once before with Cassidy coming out on top in that encounter. When the runs started Cassidy made an unforced error by locking up into turn 1 which pushed him wide for the rest of the first sequence of corners. Ultimately Cassidy just kept bleeding time out of his lap and by the end of the lap Da Costa ended up crossing the line 0.490 faster than Cassidy. Cassidy’s lap time was slower than Buemi’s and so would start behind the Nissan E-Dams driver. Da Costa, therefore, advanced into the semi-finals coming up against Dennis.

The third duel saw De Vries come up against Giovinazzi, and just like the first duel, was the first time the pair had come up against each other. It was a fairly even duel for most of the lap until De Vries had a huge lock-up going into turn 16 which handed the advantage to Giovinazzi. Even with the lockup De Vries didn't lose as much time as you would expect, he was trailing Giovinazzi by 0.020, and at the next timing loop after he trailed the Italian by 0.123 but De Vries never gave up and ultimately finished 0.063 behind. Giovinazzi, therefore, progressed into the semi-finals where he would face either Askew or Di Grassi.

The fourth and final semi-final duel was another first-time battle between Askew and Di Grassi but on Askew’s flying lap he hit the wall on the exit of turn 8 and broke the front left corner of the Avalanche Andretti which gave Di Grassi an easy ticket into the semi-final where he would face Giovinazzi.

Semi-Final Duels:

Moving onto the semi-final first duel was between the man inform Dennis coming up against Da Costa. Carrying on with the trend, this was the first time that the Avalanche Andretti driver has come up against the DS-Techeetah driver in the knockout stages of qualifying. Even though riding on board with Dennis there was a bit of understeer in the car, he was able to carry more speed into the corners compared to Da Costa which resulted in a 0.379 difference between the drivers in Dennis’s favour.

The second semi-final duel between Giovinazzi and Di Grassi was a first-time duel and where ever the Italian qualified would be a career-best start and also the highest the team has started this season. The first sector is what hurt Giovinazzi as he lost nearly 2 tenths of a second and never really recovered the time loss from there. Di Grassi went on to win the duel and cement a place in the final against Dennis, for Giovinazzi with a time of 1:12:962 meant he was faster than Da Costa which put him P3 on the grid for the race in a few hours.

Moving onto the final head-to-head between Di Grassi and Dennis and on paper, this was going to be the closest duel we were going to see for the entire season. Both drivers were setting 1:12:6 lap times throughout the qualifying format. Di Grassi was searching for his first pole in 5 years in the series whereas Dennis was searching for his 2nd pole of the weekend. It started as you would imagine but drivers were separated by nothing during the first half of the lap until Di Grassi locked up at turn 16 and lost 0.738 seconds, giving Dennis pole position for the 2nd time during the weekend.

Race:

Once the pack emerged from the darkness of the Excel Center, in the Docklands area of East London, where Lucas Di Grassi took his maiden win for the Rokit Venturi team ahead of fellow front-row starter Jake Dennis. Lap one and there was contact on the entrance of turn 6 between the Mahindra of Oliver Rowland and Avalanche Andretti’s Oliver Askew which left the Mahindra driver with a damaged car and his race was over. Fast forward to turn 16 when Stoffel Vandoorne clipped the rear of Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein while fighting for P12.

Five minutes into the E-Prix disaster struck for DS-TeCheetah and Jean-Eric Vergne when his car came to a stop all but ending his title challenge leading to the appearance of the Porsche Taycan safety car. Once the safety car came back into the pits, Nyck De Vries was the first to take attack mode, on offer were 3 4-minute doses.

After qualifying a career-best P3, Antonio Giovinazzi was getting his elbows out in his battle to keep Antonio Felix Da Costa behind allowing De Vries to close up and then take advantage of the squabbling. Giovinazzi would end up getting shuffled down the order after the first round and was now down in 5th place but all hopes of scoring his first points were all but over when he was handed a drive-through penalty for overpower.

Lap 20 saw Mitch Evans overtake Da Costa for 4th place but Vandoorne was still lurking behind in 6th place. All Vandoorne needed to do is finish a place or two behind Evans so that the points gap wouldn’t shrink too much. Di Grassi meanwhile was about to activate his final attack mode while Dennis had one in hand which lead to a fascinating tactical battle.

Eduardo Mortara's chance of winning the season 8 title was heavily dented when an ambitious move on Sam Bird, for 9th position, resulted in the Venturi driver spinning. Vandoorne had now past Da Costa for 5th place with title rival Evans ahead of him which meant that the points gap would be 22 points as things stood.

The fascinating battle between Dennis and Di Grassi got even spicier after the Brit activated his final attack mode which dropped him behind the experienced Brazilian racer with 8 minutes of the race left.

Due to the earlier safety car, there were an additional 3 minutes to the race by which time Di Grassi had built up a 1.5-second gap to Dennis. Heartbreak was to happen for the Jaguar TCS Racing 9 car of Evans when the Kiwi suffered a technical problem, the same problem that occurred in the season-ending race in Berlin the year before and forced him to retire the car at Custom House.

Even though this late failure helped Vandoorne to a 36-point advantage, you could see what sort of man he was coming over the radio and feeling quite sympathetic after the Kiwi’s late retirement. There was however cause for celebration at the Dragon/Penske Autosport garage when Sergio Sette Camara scored his and the team's first points of the season.

Di Grassi went on to win the E-Prix and claim his first with the Rokit Venturi Racing team with Dennis finishing 2nd and De Vries rounding out the podium. Vandoorne finished 4th, Da Costa 5th, Sebastian Buemi 6th, Robin Frijns 7th, Bird in 8th, Sette Camara 9th and Wehrlein rounding out the top 10.

Championship Standings

Drivers Standings:

Positions	Driver	Team	Points
1	Stoffel Vandoorne	Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team	185
2	Mitch Evans	Jaguar TCS Racing	149
3	Eduardo Mortara	Rokit Venturi Racing	144
4	Jean-Eric Vergne	DS TeCheetah	128
5	Antonio Felix Da Costa	DS TeCheetah	116
6	Lucas Di Grassi	Rokit Venturi Racing	111
7	Robin Frijns	Envision Racing	110
8	Nyck De Vries	Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team	106
9	Jake Dennis	Avalanche Andretti Formula E	98
10	Pascal Wehrlein	Tag Heuer Porsche Formula E Team	65
11	Andre Lotterer	Tag Heuer Porsche Formula E Team	63
12	Nick Cassidy	Envision Racing	62
13	Sam Bird	Jaguar TCS Racing	51
14	Sebastian Buemi	Nissan E.Dams	28
15	Alexander Sims	Mahindra Racing	14
16	Oliver Askew	Avalanche Andretti Formula E	14
17	Oliver Rowland	Mahindra Racing	11
18	Oliver Turvey	Nio 333 FE Team	6
29	Maximilian Guenther	Nissan E.Dams	6
20	Sergio Sette Camara	Dragon/Penske Autosport	2
21	Dan Ticktum	Nio 333 FE Team	1
22	Antonio Giovinazzi	Dragon/Penske Autosport	0

Constructors Standings:

Position	Team	Points
1	Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team	291
2	Rokit Venturi Racing	255
3	DS TeCheetah	244
4	Jaguar TCS Racing	200
5	Envision Racing	172
6	Tag Heuer Porsche Formula E Team	128
7	Avalanche Andretti Formula E	112
8	Nissan E.Dams	34
9	Mahindra Racing	25
10	Nio 333 FE Team	7
11	​Dragon/Penske Autosport	2

The Fans:

Throughout the entire weekend, the fans that attended both races were exceptional with their support. The loudest cheers were, of course, given to Jake Dennis but every driver was given a warm reception every time they came past the grandstands. It had the feel of Silverstone when Formula 1 comes to town, where no matter which driver you support they would always be given a loud cheer and applause.

The Event:

As far as an event goes Formula E nailed the entire weekend, there may have been a few things done differently but overall it was a quality weekend. Clashing with the Hungarian Grand Prix is something that needs to be avoided and there does need to be some more activities to do to fill a 2 and a-half-hour gap from when qualifying ends to when the cars go to the grid but other than that I would recommend highly to go catch a Formula E race given how the TV pictures don’t do it justice how loud the electric engines are in the back of the cars.