Jaguar’s eventful route to a likely Formula E title boost

Jaguar has a big chance to revitalise its 2023 Formula E title bid in Rome after securing a front row sweep for race one with its championship contender Mitch Evans on pole ahead of team-mate Sam Bird.

Its route there was typically eventful for FE, with Bird – who will be replaced at the team by current Envision driver Nick Cassidy next season – at one stage looking like he’d lost his place in the duels due to a yellow flag infringement.

BIRD IN THEN OUT THEN BACK IN

Championship leader Jake Dennis, Bird and Stoffel Vandoorne (who was completing qualifying with a broken front wing after an early error, the rules not allowing DS Penske to change it mid-session) were all put under investigation for setting times while yellows were out for NIO333’s Sergio Sette Camara spin-turning in an escape road.

Vandoorne hits the wall at Turn 7 and suffers front wing damage! @Hankook_Sport #RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/fIOwiZdDvE

— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) July 15, 2023

While no action was taken against Dennis (third in the session), it was initially announced that Bird and Vandoorne’s laptimes would be deleted, dropping Bird – who’d been second to Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz – out of the duels.

Here's the incident that saw Sam have his lap time deleted.@Hankook_Sport #RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/PRBDwavqGy

— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) July 15, 2023

Jaguar challenged this and continued getting Bird ready for the next stage of qualifying. The stewards re-examined the laps and concluded that Bird and Vandoorne had both reacted to the yellows sufficiently and gained no advantage, so their times stood after all and the official bulletin about the incident declared no further action.

JAGUAR’S PACE ADVANTAGE

Bird duly dismissed Dennis and Fenestraz in the duels to reach an all-Jaguar final against practice pacesetter Evans, who’d breezed past Edoardo Mortara and Sebastien Buemi in his duels.

Though Bird had the initial edge in the final, Evans was ultimately quickest by nearly two seconds – a margin that suggested Bird had made sure it was his title-chasing team-mate who had the top spot and the three bonus points that go with it.

Evans won both races in Rome last year and triumphed there in 2019 too. All the evidence from the weekend’s sessions so far suggests a clear pace advantage for the factory Jaguar pair.

Fenestraz, Buemi, Rene Rast and Mortara separate the Jaguars from the next best placed title contender – Dennis in seventh.

WHERE THE OTHER TITLE CONTENDERS START

Dennis currently holds a one-point lead over Cassidy, who starts ninth, and 16 over Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein (10th on the Rome grid), with Evans fourth in the standings but now within 29 points of Dennis thanks to his pole.

Wehrlein missed the duels by 0.034s but would have been the beneficiary had Bird’s lap deletion stood.

MASSIVE CRASH FOR HUGHES

Cassidy’s qualifying was compromised by the second group being red-flagged during the final laps when McLaren’s Jake Hughes had a heavy crash in which he hit the barriers on both sides of the track.

A nasty smash for @McLarenFE’s @JakeHughesRace with the Group B session ending under a Red Flag. @mitchevans_, @Sebastien_buemi, @ReneRastRacing and @edomortara progress to the Duels ⚔️@Hankook_Sport #RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/px6CO2aPPb

— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) July 15, 2023

He put the incident down to being surprised by how the car reacted over a bump and was unhurt.

Hughes had been third when he crashed but drops to the back as he was unable to continue into the duels. With the spare chassis pooled between McLaren and powertrain supplier Nissan having been taken by Norman Nato yesterday, Hughes’ chances of making this afternoon’s race are slim.

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Qualifying actually matters this time

Sam Smith

After a run of Formula E races in which qualifying was largely irrelevant – which peaked last time out with the ultra lift-and-coast madness of Portland where the series recorded 403 overtaking moves – the starting positions in Rome this weekend should have more value.

Energy-saving will still be a feature in the opening laps, it will not be anywhere near the extent seen recently.

The nature of the Rome track, in the EUR area of the eternal city, is much more in keeping with traditional street circuits where a succession of 90-degree left and right hand corners mix flowingly with cascading dips and weaves around the brutalist architecture of Mussolini’s dodgy pre-war visions.

This will ensure that regeneration via the front and rear axles of the Gen3 cars is much more profitable than on the mostly flat-out sweeps of Portland.

As already seen in practice and qualifying, these quick in a straight line but grip and traction limited Gen3 cars

“They are a proper challenge to dominate and I think Rome will highlight that a lot,” Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa told The Race going into the weekend.

“It’s a long track, a lot of partial throttle stuff, a lot of high power to dominate and lower grip than the usual tracks that we’ve been going to.

“Already I think it will be tricky to overtake, so I think it will probably go from the most overtakes that we’ve had in a race [at Portland] to probably the least, so very qualifying biased.

“In Portland it didn’t really matter where you started, but I think these races… it doesn’t mean if you start 10th you can’t do anything but it will definitely be a little bit harder to go forwards.”

Da Costa has been one of the least critical drivers when it comes to Formula E 2023 mixing up its racing styles by varying lap distances in double-headers.

Saturday’s race on the 2.1-mile Rome track will be 25 laps, one more than Sunday’s.

The distances are chosen after exhaustive simulator testing via the Simulator Working Group which is managed by the FIA.

“It’s an experience era for Formula E, and you can see with the experiments on double-headers with different distances, they are trying to understand what works, what doesn’t work,” said da Costa.

“We’ll see how it develops. Maybe I’m wrong. There will still be a lot of action, for sure, it’s never a dull race in FE. It’s going to be fun.”

Qualifying Results