Formula E’s New York double-header did not disappoint with two brilliant races that leave the championship wide open with just two events remaining.
Maximilian Guenther passed two drivers with one overtake to emerge victorious in race one, while Sam Bird claimed his second victory with Jaguar on Sunday to move into the championship lead from 13th.
The Race’s Formula E correspondent Sam Smith rates the performances of Guenther, Bird and their 22 rivals.
DS Techeetah
Antonio Felix da Costa – 7
Positions: 12th/3rd
Championship position: 2nd, 76 points
Da Costa indulged in a quick spin at the Turn 10 hairpin in free practice and then posted a solid time in the track evolution disadvantaged first qualifying group to place 13th on the grid.
He ran in the same position in the early stages and soon began to struggle with excessive oversteer and some minor damage from a first lap contact. Despite briefly running 10th he eventually faded to an atypically meek 12th at the finish.
Sunday brought better fortunes with a more balanced car on the more rubbered in track. Second in group qualifying was a good return but he was just 0.014s off making superpole and started seventh.
Another canny race came to the reigning champion as he picked off the Porsches easily before attacking the Cassidy and Evans battle. Was promoted to third after Evans’ shunt and stays well in contention for a crack at back-to-back titles.
Jean-Eric Vergne – 7
Positions: 2nd/DNS
Championship position: 6th, 68 points
Vergne topped group two in qualifying but was angry with himself for a slight error at the final turn which compromised his superpole lap when pole was a real possibility but instead he started second to Cassidy.
Tracked leader Cassidy for much of the race and with a slight energy advantage looked ideally placed to swoop.
He eventually did so with a late dive in to T10 but struggled to rotate his car and the resulting slight contact allowed a predatory Guenther through to a famous win and related Vergne to a slightly rueful runners-up spot.
Sunday was a rare write-off with a brace of technical issues rendering a back of the grid position.
Another problem left him stranded on the grid and pondering what might have been from another bittersweet weekend.
Nissan e.dams
Sebastien Buemi – 5
Positions: 6th/15th
Championship position: 20th, 20 points
At the sight of his last pole position in 2019 Buemi appeared to be back to his old potent self as he took his second-best grid placing of the season with fifth.
He was though disappointed after a small braking episode at T1 slightly took the shine off his overall fastest group qualifying effort.
Braved it out with Guenther at the start but soon faded with limited pace as the BMW driver slipped through and then di Grassi did likewise. Rowland and Frijns followed and despite re-taking his team-mate on the last lap, it was a generally underwhelmed Buemi who took sixth at the finish.
Sunday saw a 13th place start translated into a surge through to ninth briefly until he was spun around by Lucas di Grassi at the chicane. This damaged the Nissan IM03 and a fed-up Buemi toured in an unrepresentative 15th.
Oliver Rowland – 5
Positions: 7th/19th
Championship position: 11th, 59 points
Rowland again looked strong in Red Hook and despite an unseemly shemozzle with a touring Sam Bird, he made the most of his second bite of the qualifying cherry to set a time good enough for an eighth-place start.
He raced but never had the pace to challenge the breakaway top four and ultimately had to settle for seventh when Buemi slipped by in the final corners.
The second race saw him pick up damage at the start of the race which hampered his progress and then a five-second penalty for contact with Joel Eriksson’s Penske EV-5 at the hairpin.
Mercedes EQ
Stoffel Vandoorne – 5
Positions: DNF/12th
Championship position: 13th, 54 points
Vandoorne felt confident heading into qualifying after showing some decent pace in practice. It all went out of the window however when he made an error in the final sector which caused a broken wheel-rim and then a puncture rooting him to a lowly 21st place start.
His race was frustrating in a train of fellow midfield cars which he was unable to clear. He was running 13th when contact from behind caused a puncture which ultimately ended his race and compromised his allocation of Michelins for Sunday.
This brought more misery but this time in the shape of being compromised by the brief shower that hit group two.
Hobbled to some extent by the use of worn tyres he managed to get up from 20th to 12th but any sniff of the points was generally out of the question meaning Vandoorne now has just six points from as many races.
Nyck de Vries – 5
Positions: 13th/18th
Championship position: 10th, 59 points
On his first visit to the Red Hook track, De Vries made short work of learning the quirky street track and was soon on the pace of team-mate Vandoorne.
His qualifying lap though was average and brought only fourth in his group and 18th overall on the grid after he got offline at T1 and ruined his tyres.
His run to 13th was dispiriting and a disillusioned de Vries simply rued the fact that his day again had been forged by simply starting in the first qualifying group.
It was a similar story on Sunday with a slow sector two in the greasy conditions resulting in a 22nd grid place start. The race pace just wasn’t there for De Vries and although 13th at one stage he ultimately trailed home in a demoralised 18th
Envision Virgin Racing
Robin Frijns – 8
Positions: 5th/10th
Championship position: 3rd, 76 points
Frijns produced a solid lap in qualifying to head the unfavoured group one. It was good enough for 11th place on the grid which was a decent return considering the track evolution.
He drove a fantastic race with a late attack mode taking strategy which came good and promoted him to a fighting fifth just behind polesitting team-mate Cassidy.
Another excellent performance was accomplished on Sunday but this time Frijns ascended an even higher peak as he rose from 21st to 8th combining initial patience and saving with some deft overtakes. He capitalised at the end by taking an energy sapped Sette Camara on the line to secure four precious points.
Nick Cassidy – 9
Positions: 4th/2nd
Championship position: 5th, 70 points
Cassidy explored the limits of the Red Hook track on his first visit, completing two rotations and several near misses in practice.
Qualifying saw top his group with a strong lap and then his Super Pole was one of the best of the season as he went purple-purple-purple to vanquish the opposition for his second Formula E pole.
Despite leading the majority of the race it was far from an easy ride with Cassidy struggling with understeer. With a slight energy disadvantage to Vergne he got caught up in the DS Techeetah drivers botched attempt at wresting the lead and got shuffled down to an eventual fourth place.
Cassidy’s Sunday was probably more impressive as he just failed to split the Jaguar’s on the front-row by 0.001s.
He was a constant threat in the race and finally got the better of fellow Kiwi, Evans to both equal his best result so far in Formula E and ensure he has accrued a whopping 51 points in the last three races.
BMW i Andretti Motorsport
Maximilian Guenther – 9
Positions: 1st/10th
Championship position: 14th, 54 points
Guenther was strong again in qualifying and made it through to claim his sixth superpole appearance of the season and start fourth.
He ran a well energy managed third for most of the race before Vergne’s ill-fated attempt to wrest the lead from Nick Cassidy presented a silver-plated opportunity for the race-winning.
He grabbed it with both hands to seal a fine third E-Prix victory.
A ragged qualifying saw a major moment in the damp of group two meaning he started 23rd but an energy-conserving race paid off well with an efficiently brilliant recovery race through to a point for 10th.
Jake Dennis – 5
Positions: DNF/DNF
Championship position: 15th, 54 points
Dennis acquitted himself well to the Red Hook track at his first visit but got caught out a little with the Rowland inspired red flag and was anchored to 15th on the grid.
Felt he could have got decent points haul but got whacked several times by good mate Alex Lynn which resulted in a puncture. He pitted to change the Michelin and returned to the fray briefly before parking to save his car for Sunday.
The weather affected qualifying group Dennis was in anchored him down in 19th on the grid but he made progress with an aggressive strategy.
That all started to unravel though when first he missed the attack mode loop and then got into a barging-fest with Edoardo Mortara’s Venturi while disputing 13th. He came home a disappointed 16th.
Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler
Lucas di Grassi – 7
Positions: 3rd/14th
Championship position: 12th, 54 points
Didn’t quite get the most of his Audi in qualifying but in typical di Grassi style, he battled his way through from seventh to fourth in the closing stages.
He had a bird’s eye view of the Cassidy and Vergne contretemps and was able to take the Envision Virgin Audi via a few gentle nudges to take a hard-earned third.
There were shades of Puebla on Sunday for di Grassi as he had some bad luck with the weather in group two, which he topped. But then there was the overly physical aspect to his race craft which saw him turn Buemi around after already having glanced off Nato’s Venturi.
This earned him a 10-second time penalty, so instead of gathering four points for eighth he went home empty-handed after a demotion back down to 14th in the final classification.
Rene Rast – 7
Positions: 10th/DNF
Championship position: 7th, 61 points
Almost a cut and paste from previous races for Rast on Saturday as he suffered misfortune in qualifying after getting stuck behind a power compromised Edoardo Mortara. That meant a lowly 22nd place start but such things seldom phase the German.
Again he built a strong carve through the field, and while he was aided by some fortune by retirements he still had a handful of strong moves to claim the final point for 10th.
Rast’s Sunday qualifying attempt was solid rather than spectacular for 11th but his race was all over on the second lap when he was hit from behind by Sebastien Buemi’s Nissan.
Jaguar Racing
Mitch Evans – 6
Positions: DNF/13th
Championship position: 8th, 60 points
Evans again looked strong in practice but he knew he would be compromised by being in what was remarkably his ninth consecutive group one qualifying appearance. And so it proved despite a decent lap.
From 16th on the grid, Evans raced well and had just got into the top 10 when a suspected electrical issue on his MGU stopped him on track.
Evans’ superpole time on Sunday was eclipsed only by team-mate Bird and it seemed the pair would work together to keep the 1-2 momentum.
That wasn’t to be however as Evans made an error by slapping the wall at the exit of T5 and mangling his suspension which gave up the ghost as he crossed the finish line a maddeningly frustrated 13th.
Sam Bird – 9
Positions: 9th, 1st
Championship position: 1st, 81 points
Bird had a nightmare start at the venue where he vanquished all before him in 2017.
His small error clipping the inside wall at the final turn spat him into a tub cracking impact on exit and triggered a herculean effort by his crew to get a new car built up.
After surviving a Rowland triggered incident in qualifying, he rewarded his teams’ efforts with a tenacious run to ninth.
Bird was truly born again on Sunday and nailed his qualifying and superpole laps to take his maiden Jaguar pole and the first of any kind since Marrakesh in January 2019.
He controlled the race beautifully and completed a textbook second win since joining Jaguar and jettisoning himself from 13th in the standings at the start of Sunday to a remarkable five-point lead.
Misses out by the slenderest of margins on a perfect 10 for his Saturday practice error.
TAG-Heuer Porsche
Andre Lotterer – 6
Positions: 8th/5th
Championship position: 18th, 32 points
Lotterer made a mistake in sector one on his qualifying lap and without that, he was a shoo-in for superpole. Still, a 10th place start was a position he could build a decent race.
This he did but it wasn’t especially dynamic as he struggled to overcome the Nissans and had to settle for eighth when more points were possibly attainable.
Sunday saw Lotterer improve in qualifying to make his first superpole appearance since Valencia in April and start the race sixth after a frustrating lock-up at Turn 1.
His race was spent largely working with team-mate Wehrlein in fourth and fifth positions until Da Costa jumped both after his second attack boost was completed. He followed Wehrlein home in fifth despite having marginally more energy.
Pascal Wehrlein – 6
Positions: DNF/4th
Championship position: 9th/60 points
Wehrlein had one of his less stellar day on Saturday, and despite getting into superpole for the third race running, he made an error at T1 on his lap and started sixth.
That should have been the foundation for a podium push but he eliminated himself when he slammed into the back of Alex Lynn after misjudging his braking at the hairpin. This all ended in the pits with broken steering an early bath.
He qualified well again in fourth place on Sunday and then had a tag-team style race alongside Lotterer which both drivers reckoned could have yielded a bit more from their respective races to fourth and fifth positions.
Mahindra Racing
Alexander Sims – 6
Positions: DNF/6th
Championship position: 16th, 44 points
Sims had a decent qualifying but was only fifth in his group although just 0.2s off poleman Cassidy, so a ninth-place start should have been a decent foundation.
His race was fraught and after running eighth in and around team-mate Lynn and his old sparring partner Andre Lotterer, he shuffled back after he gave team-mate Lynn a wide berth and lost several positions.
Shortly after he pitted with a damaged tyre after being hit several times earlier on in the race.
Sims made amends to some extent on Sunday with a fine drive to sixth position in a curious race which saw him forced to bide his time while Sette Camara’s Dragon blew itself out energy-wise.
It was a measured drive again from Sims but overall he and the team were more than a little perplexed as to their overall relative lack of race pace during the weekend as a whole.
Alex Lynn – 6
Positions: 11th/9th
Championship position: 17th, 34 points
After a brief hiccup in Puebla, Lynn again showed his default hot pace form in qualifying and was less than 0.1 off group topper Cassidy.
His superpole lap was strong, especially sector one and he lined up in a satisfied third.
The race was frustrating though as he locked up at T1 just as he looked to be slotting into P2. He was able to run fifth but then slipped back when he was torpedoed by an errant Wehrlein.
More damagingly though was the excessive energy use while booting it back onto the track and ultimately this was the main factor in rooting Lynn to 11th at the chequered flag.
There were slim pickings again for Lynn on Sunday as his Mahindra M7ELECTRO was just not able to deliver on the Brooklyn streets.
He raced in the midfield pack largely energetically with old Valencia sparring partner Norman Nato. He grabbed two points in the last lap shakeout but it was little compensation for a tough weekend for the Indian team.
ROKiT Venturi Racing
Edoardo Mortara – 5
Positions: 14th/17th
Championship position: 4th/72 points
Erstwhile points leader Mortara’s Saturday was affected by a glitch that saw him stuck in 200kW power for his quali lap. This not only compromised himself but also that of the following Rene Rast and re-visited similar issues that have sullied Venturi’s races earlier in the season.
On the backfoot Mortara did what he could but there was not so much a sniff of a point and he toured in 14th.
Sunday saw Mortara post a reasonable group one lap, this time with the requisite power. But it was only good enough for a 14th place start and from there he scrapped with Jake Dennis’ BMW, ultimately coming out second best in a territorial dispute at Turn 1.
The subsequent contact and re-join dropped him down the order but he fought back gamely but to little beneficial again and toom the flag a despondent 17th.
Norman Nato – 6
Positions: 15th/7th
Championship position: 21st, 17 points
Nato has a quiet Saturday with an underwhelming qualifying lap that rooted him to a 19th place start. He showed decent race pace though and was 12th before he lost out in the midfield squabble, went offline at T10 and dropped down behind team-mate Mortara to P15.
The only crumb of comfort is that he was able to set the overall fastest lap of the race.
Sunday saw a battling Nato emerge with a decent seventh-placed finish after a poor start and then bruising race from thereon. He picked up several battle scars after contact with Lynn, including a remarkable carbon piece that lodged in his nose like a shark fin (pictured above).
This didn’t impede his progress and he elbowed his way through, taking advantage of Sette Camara’s waning energy and di Grassi’s penalty to claim six much-needed points for seventh position.
Dragon Penske
Joel Eriksson – 4
Positions: 17th/22nd
Championship position: 25th, 0 points
Like Puebla, Eriksson was put on the backfoot before he’d even lined up on the grid when he was sent to the back for going over the 200-kW limit during his non-flying qualifying lap. After qualifying only 21st it was not a huge setback, however.
His race was lowkey and it became clear he was unable to hang on to the pack, dropping away from Blomqvist’s NIO steadily as the race wore on and coming in 41 seconds away from the leader in 17th position.
The Swede at last had a clear qualifying without penalties to worry about (that came in the race!) but he produced a committed lap, that included a glance of the wall, to place 15th.
His race was ruined with yet another Dragon penalty for an overpower during regeneration and it rooted Eriksson to the tail of the field and an eventual classification in 22nd.
Sergio Sette Camara – 7
Positions: 18th/11th
Championship position: 23rd, 12 points
A quick spin at T10 apart Sette Camara had a solid start to his weekend but yet again got compromised in the race when he had to take a drive-through penalty for another throttle pedal map infringement.
This obviously ruined his race but he never lost motivation and worked hard to get within nine-seconds of team-mate Eriksson on his way to an ultimately fruitless 18th.
It did though at least give him and the team valuable data for Sunday and the Brazilian made the most of it with another punching above the cars weight performance. He topped his group before completing an excellent superpole lap to net a fifth-place start, his best since Diriyah in February.
His race was also excellent with a brave performance that essentially begged for a race stoppage or late-race full course yellow. Sadly for him, it didn’t come and after running in a merited seventh for the bulk of the race he eventually accepted the inevitable and dropped down the order as he was forced to back off due to depleted energy. A valiant effort that ultimately went unrewarded.
Nio333
Oliver Turvey – 4
Positions: DNF/DNF
Championship position: 22nd, 13 points
Turvey started brightly but lost his way a little on set-up in the second practice session and then glanced a wall on his qualifying lap but got away with it, to start a reasonable 14th.
His race was ruined early on when he was hit by Norman Nato who damaged the back of his car which in turn triggered a puncture and an early retirement.
Turvey’s Sunday was again disappointing as a decent qualifying effort came to nothing when he was forced to park his NIO333 01 after he clipped a wall. It was a shame as his energy numbers were improved a little from Saturday but he was always going to be hamstrung to some extent anyway due to carryover tyre damage from the Nato mauling.
Tom Blomqvist – 4
Positions: 16th/21st
Championship position: 24th, 5 points
Wasn’t especially happy with his qualifying lap which was 0.4s shy of his team-mate but he still started just three places further back in 17th.
A sluggish start put him on the backfoot slightly but he plugged away and eventually came home 16th right on the tail of the Venturis.
Sunday brought more misfortune for Blomqvist as he lost a second in the final sector on his qualifying lap due to a brush with the wall – without this, he was looking good for a superpole appearance.
His race was scuppered early after a power spike brought a drive-through penalty and then a lonely run to an out of contention and frustrated 21st.
