Defending Formula E champion Antonio Felix da Costa has branded Andre Lotterer a “sore loser” after he was pushed into the wall during the second London E-Prix race.
DS Techeetah driver da Costa was fighting back through the field after a difficult qualifying session left him on the penultimate row of the grid.
“I overtook 10 drivers before then and everyone was respectful enough to not hit me in the wall” :: Antonio Felix da Costa
Da Costa closed in on Lotterer’s 11th place and used the extra speed from his attack mode to dive to the inside of Lotterer on the start/finish straight, only for Lotterer to drift over and send da Costa into the barriers.
Lotterer’s Porsche emerged relatively unscathed while da Costa’s car retired with terminal damage and caused the second safety car of the race.
The stewards decided Lotterer was to blame for causing a collision and slapped him with a drive-through penalty that grounded him to 18th at the chequered flag.
“Some people are really sore losers,” da Costa told The Race. “Sometimes in life, you need to let go and I was on attack mode, faster and clearly had enough of an overlap.
“I overtook 10 drivers before then and everyone was respectful enough to not hit me in the wall.”
“I clearly defended early on and he still wanted to go into that little hole” :: Andre Lotterer
Da Costa, who has slipped to fifth in the championship 15 points adrift of new leader Nyck de Vries, was quick to point out that it’s far from Lotterer’s first incident.
“Coming from him, I should have expected it so maybe it’s my bad, when it comes to Lotterer, you have to give him extra room,” da Costa added.
“It’s always him, I cannot remember the last time he finished a race with a clean front wing.”
Lotterer called his race “mega” before the incident and believed da Costa risked it by taking the inside and “squeezed himself into a hole”.
“I clearly defended early on and he still wanted to go into that little hole,” he told The Race.
“He came with extra speed, it was his decision to take that risk.
“So I got blamed, but I don’t fully agree with that. For sure, it’s racing, but he could have also gone outside, also sometimes I had the opportunities to lunge it but I didn’t do it, because there was too much risk.”
Lotterer was previously involved in an opening lap collision with polesitter Stoffel Vandoorne in Rome earlier this year and collided with both Sebastien Buemi and Edoardo Mortara at Valencia.
Asked if he planned to speak to da Costa about the incident, Lotterer replied: “No, it’s not going to change anything.
“Obviously it’s easy for him to blame me, now the stewards have decided to blame me but he’s still the one who came from behind, it’s not like we were side-by-side.”
