Da Costa clinches Formula E title early, Vergne wins race

Antonio Felix da Costa claimed his first Formula E title with two rounds to spare at the fourth Berlin E-Prix, with DS Techeetah executing a commanding race to score a 1-2 and the teams’ championship.

While outgoing champion Jean-Eric Vergne crossed the line first to win the race, Da Costa followed home in second.

Vergne had started the race on pole and defended from da Costa at the start, but DS Techeetah choreographed a swap following the first use of attack mode which let da Costa into the lead and allowed Vergne to conserve energy through the 45-minute race – held in damp conditions on the traditional Tempelhof layout.

In the final portion of the race, da Costa cleanly allowed Vergne back past him in order to take the race win – by which time a championship victory was secured as neither Nissan car of Sebastien Buemi or Oliver Rowland managed to launch an attack to trouble DS Techeetah.

Buemi finished the race in third, while Rowland was just pipped to fourth by Mercedes’ Nyck de Vries – who overtook the Nissan on the very last lap of the race.

Lucas di Grassi ran a relatively solitary race for Audi to finish in sixth, ahead of Mitch Evans for Jaguar. Evans had enjoyed a long battle for seventh with Andre Lotterer and Alex Lynn.

Lynn had initially looked set for a promising race and run as high as third, coming through from his seventh-place starting grid position, but reported a problem with the dash on his Mahindra meaning he dropped back and just clung onto ninth place.

Felipe Massa completed the top 10 for ROKiT Venturi, ahead of Sam Bird who charged through the field for Envision Virgin from 17th place and the Mercedes of Stoffel Vandoorne, who had started only 20th.

The race was interrupted briefly by a single safety car period at the start when Saturday’s race winner Maximilian Guenther tangled with the NIO333 of Oliver Turvey – crashing and putting the BMW i Andretti driver immediately out of the race.

Guenther was deemed to be at fault for that incident by the stewards after an in-race investigation and has subsequently incurred a three-place grid drop for the next race – run on the extended Tempelhof circuit on Wednesday evening.

Yesterday’s runner-up Robin Frijns failed to take the start of the race at all owing to a battery issue on his Envision Virgin car.

Race Results