The reigning champion ended the race upside down - and the driver who he just beat to the title won from last on the grid. The headlines were loud from Formula E's 2024-25 season opener, and they truly reflected the chaotic nature of the race.
Here's what we learned from the Sao Paulo extravaganza, that also served as the debut of Formula E's new Gen3Evo formula.
Gen3Evo is a huge step - and a big change
All-wheel drive Formula E is rapid and attack mode is back… with a vengeance!
When the AWD is applied it makes the cars visibly quicker and more impressive on traction out of corners. The pole position time (1m09.851s) set by Pascal Wehrlein was just a whisker off three seconds faster than the quickest qualifying time earlier this year (1m12.789) at the same circuit. That is a major improvement for Formula E within the same basic rules set, albeit a different homologation.
But the real noticeable difference was the potency of the 350kW attack mode phases of the race, taken in two hits over eight minutes - in itself an increase compared to the six minutes preferred for most of last season.
Prior to this season the first spec of Gen3 cars just found it too difficult to translate the power to traction largely due to the ultra-durable nature of the tyres. With a different, racier product from Hankook now that has changed, and for the better.
While many viewers were surprised at the potency of the attack mode, in reality it was always expected.
The first inkling that it was going to be ‘party time’ again for drivers making progress came when Nick Cassidy surged through from the lower reaches of the top 10 to grab the lead. Even some of the drivers were pleasantly surprised at what it gave them in terms of gaining track position.
“I would say it was more than what I expected, in terms of pure pace and seeing the gaps in the race edge out,” Oliver Rowland told The Race.
“We knew it was going to be strong, it was easy to pass, very easy.”
"I was waiting to use my first attack mode for a while, and I think I dropped back from two or three to two outside the top 10. And it's kind of worrying in the car when that happens, but you just got to stay calm. Your time will come once you activate it," reflected Antonio Felix da Costa.
"But yeah, you'll have a lot of work in front of you to go back past, you know, 10 cars or whatever. So, very interesting, very different dynamic."
The overview is that Formula E needed this step and it’s done well to establish it and market it before it’s been evidenced publicly for the first time. These cars now genuinely wow trackside and on TV.
Nissan is quick but fragile
The word on the private testing street over the last few months was that Nissan had made a significant step up in its technical package and application of it for this season.
This was borne out completely in Sao Paulo - as Oliver Rowland put in a sensational qualifying effort to claim a close second to Wehrlein despite tweaked steering after brushing a wall.
But, and in the context of the weekend as a whole it was a big but, the Nissans were fragile, with issues afflicting Sam Bird and Norman Nato in particular ahead of the race and then all four cars getting penalties for issues with the "control systems during the start procedure".
This dashed Rowland's hopes, but the two customer McLarens were at least able to bounce back through fortune and some quick-on-their-feet strategy play.
Nissan will win races this season, as it did last. But this time it feels as though it is now an authentic rival to Porsche and Jaguar for a full-on title charge. That will balm the sting of Sao Paulo a little.
“Now the frustration is very hard to swallow,” Nissan’s Tommaso Volpe told The Race.
“To be honest, we are very happy to see on track what we were assuming we would have achieved in terms of improvement. Then probably we need to put things together better.”
Wehrlein's title defence is real
He may have ended his first race as reigning champion on his head and then in hospital but Wehrlein looked every inch a probable title-defending boss at Sao Paulo.
His pole lap, the second in succession at the Sambadrome circuit, was excellent and his race, while not perfect, would have seen him get big points had it not been for the unfortunate incident with Cassidy’s already-wounded Big Cat.
Wehrlein and team-mate Da Costa found themselves in the mix with some drivers that probably wouldn’t have been in their orbit had it not been for the red flags. And the scrappiness of the battles they got sucked into masked their flair and potential later in the race.
“Pascal and Antonio were on a similar strategy and always in good spots, especially then taking the six-minutes attack mode and then making the way through again to the top group, which was the target,” Porsche Formula E chief Florian Modlinger told The Race.
“Then after the red flag there were some cars in the game which would have not been in the game without the red flag. This means there suddenly other competitors were in place - because of having issues at the beginning or saving energy.”
Porsche’s outlook is, as expected, strong for this season. Wehrlein pre-shunt looked very sharp indeed and every inch an effective title defender. The accident was particularly horrible and Wehrlein was naturally and understandably rattled by it as he was extricated.
He suffered something similar in practice for the Hyderabad E-Prix in February 2023, which also necessitated a trip to the hospital. It was a very different accident that day (caused by a technical issue rather than a racing incident). He will have time to recover from it and hopefully rationalise it completely and pick up from where he left off to exert what is clearly a lot of potential from the new Gen3Evo Porsche 99XElectric.
Jaguar's extreme emotions continue
Little microcosms of similarity to Jaguar’s last campaign cropped up in Sao Paulo, as it juggled a remarkable high – Evans’s sensational victory – with Cassidy’s retirement and the fallout from the lead-up to how it all happened.
Cassidy was effectively overcut by his team-mate on the final attack mode and he was clearly displeased about it as he was also down on energy slightly compared to his fellow Kiwi counterpart.
“Overcut by my teammate, is that right?” Cassidy asked to his new engineer for this season, Geoffrey Lenfant.
And then there was “what’s his [Evans'] target on his dash, give me his!”
This came just before Cassidy got sucked into the initial incident involving da Costa and Maximilian Guenther - which broke his steering and triggered the unfortunate shunt with Wehrlein.
Was the querying an extension of wanting to know where things were in terms of rules of engagement again after the episodes of last season?
Cassidy, clearly emotional and clearly checking his words carefully, offered a curt reply.
“I knew where things were very clearly when I was told what to do.”
His team boss James Barclay told The Race: “We'll always look back at the race and say, ‘could we have done something better for both of them?'.
“We needed to sit down as a team and look at that, but again, the fact we had both cars in a chance of being on the podium, we won with one of them, as a team result, it's great.
“All the things that we can orchestrate and do better, we'll always take that away and have a look at that.
“It's really difficult though, when we're also learning about attack mode, for the first time this level of attack mode, yes - but as always, we'll take the positives, but also most importantly, we'll take the things we can do better.”
Pit boost not wanted or needed
“The race, we expected that it's not a pure peloton race, that it's a semi-peloton-to-quick race,” Porsche boss Modlinger told The Race of the Sao Paulo E-Prix.
“I think it was quite quick, that if we would have had no red flag, that we would have seen at the end some surprises with derating and too-hot temperatures. Unfortunately we could not arrive there, which is a pity, because it would have been really interesting and a challenge.”
That encapsulates what a non-suspended race in the Sambadrome may have been like. Interesting and complex enough. But when the red flags flew it added much more as it brought others into play. That’s part of the game, of course, but how does it all transfer to the consumer – the viewer and fan?
Then there is the further testing of the pit-boosting equipment that took place in Sao Paulo on Friday in readiness for what is anticipated to be an implementation of it in Jeddah for rounds three and four in February.
While the Fortescue Zero-developed and -supplied hardware has got to a level of good reliability, the bigger picture of its existence is that it will add another complexity layer, or 12!
The Race understands that even some figures in the FIA and the promoters in Formula E have confessed to confusion in aspects of the races and being able to track the arc of racing.
The races typically last for 45-50 minutes and within that there are multiple strategies playing out with the newly-active attack mode power boosts. These combined with the energy targets and tyre management now create a porridge of multi-tasking complexity that drivers and teams have to wade through.
It proved exciting and dynamic enough in Sao Paulo to provide a riveting race but at times it is hard to simply take it all in. The TV producers do their best, as do the stewards to keep track of everything, but it often feels as though they and the commentators/pundits are gasping for air, such is the frenzied action.
Add in 22 mandatory pitstops to that mix and the chaos will be amplified to the hills and back. How will new fans, already mesmerised by the complexity of the action and strategy, cope with that?
It feels there's a danger, with the pit-boosting, of a return of the lottery aspect last seen with that 2021 qualifying format.
On that occasion the teams and notably the manufacturers got decidedly fed up and demanded change, which to the credit of the FIA and Formula E they executed and brought a much more rewarding landscape.
Again, it’s the equation of sport and showbiz that is at the heart of decisions here. Pit-boosting will come - but when it does, its effect on the structure of races feels like it will be very divisive both with the competitors and potentially with fans.
