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There were moments of genius up and down the field during Formula E’s Rome double-header, but also some examples of shocking driving – including from unlikely sources.
Here’s how our correspondent Sam Smith ranked all 24 drivers’ performances.
DS Techeetah
Antonio Felix da Costa – 7
Positions: DNF/7th
Championship position: 10th
A rare qualifying mistake set da Costa back on Saturday when he glanced the wall at Turn 8 but he made decent progress in the race to ease in to the top 10. But a relatively light skirmish with Rast’s Audi resulted in a race ending puncture.
Sunday initially seemed to offer little in the way improvement after he struggled for grip in the wet. But in the race things picked up slightly and he had an active race, making numerous passes to claim seventh.
One of da Costa’s toughest weekends for a long time but he never stopped fighting – which is always the mark of a champion.
Jean-Eric Vergne – 8
Positions: 1st/11th
Championship position: 8th
From big wreck to the top deck!
Vergne’s Saturday was a rollercoaster that dipped then peaked spectacularly following his innocent part in the frightening practice accident.
An epic rebuild from his team seemed to strengthen the double champion’s resolve and he built a faultless race to take his 10th Formula E win after some fraught dicing with di Grassi’s Audi.
Sunday was less kind when, like team-mate da Costa, he found the new DS E-TENSE FE21 ultra tricky on the moist track and he started a lowly 21st.
His race was a tale of woe and a subdued run to an eventual 11th place on a day which slightly and rather unfairly dampened his weekend’s early great achievements.
Nissan e.dams
Sebastien Buemi – 5
Positions: 10th/DNF
Championship position: 16th
Buemi’s first points of the season came from a solid if somewhat subdued race on Saturday where he lost positions early on but then kept his head while those around either lost theirs or were compromised by issues.
Fifth place was still a decent tonic after being outshone again by team-mate Rowland in qualifying.
Buemi was again nibbling at the top 10 on Sunday. But when a dice with old nemesis di Grassi went wrong and sent the Audi into the wall, the Nissan e.dams driver was adjudged to be culpable.
Oliver Rowland – 7
Positions: 12th/16th
Championship position: 12th
Rowland continued his superb qualifying form with a magical group two lap to trounce his direct opposition on Saturday. This presented a genuine crack at pole and he was ever so close until he clouted the wall and damaged his Nissan FE.21.
The impact necessitated a battery change but he escaped a penalty because the change was a safety request from the FIA and McLaren Applied.
The race was another disappointment as he was slapped with a power over-spike penalty just after he took the lead and looked comfortable at the front. He tenaciously fought back but took little from a forlorn 12th place.
From bad to worse for @NickCassidy_…The Kiwi is now last after an incident with @oliverrowland1
Live updates here >> https://t.co/sHOKGxvLZW#RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/SAkGJYSiRJ
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) April 11, 2021
A combative Rowland shoved Cassidy into the wall early in race two. The stewards reciprocated with a five-second time penalty but he dug in and looked to be eyeing a top 10 finish before being taken out by de Vries’ last lap lunge. He recovered to take a lowly 16th.
Mercedes
Stoffel Vandoorne – 9
Positions: DNF/1st
Championship position: 4th
Vandoorne eased to pole position with a polished lap in superpole and looked to be in reasonable control over the first racing lap until he was persuaded into the escape road by Lotterer.
Down in 13th he then collected himself and showed strong recovery traits to get back in the hunt for at least a podium position. That was until he lost control while trying to avoid di Grassi’s crocked Audi.
Race day two was a masterclass with a memorable qualifying lap to ensure he laid a foundation with fourth on the grid. This time he took a stranglehold on a race, and did it sublimely by building a large gap at the front.
Dealing with the safety car banana-skin was made to look simple by the Belgian, as he completed a textbook final lap to claim his second E-Prix success.
Almost the perfect weekend then from a performance perspective. But not quite, owing to a question mark around his decision to defend the lead so vehemently and so early in race one against a driver as aggressive as Lotterer.
Nyck de Vries – 6
Positions: DNF/DNF
Championship position: 5th
Nil points for de Vries was a bitter pill for a driver who showed all the signs of bringing the momentum he harnessed from Saudi Arabia to the streets of Rome.
But it simply never happened for the erstwhile points leader and his only souvenirs from Italy were a bent car x 2!
Seventh on the grid was an excellent result on Saturday and he was in the hunt for another podium visit until he was swiped out of the race by a rotating Vandoorne, who was in turn trying to avoid a slowing di Grassi.
With a rebuilt car de Vries, like all of the group one qualifiers, struggled in the greasy conditions. But he made some progress and was ironically on a damage limitation run on the final lap when he lost control upon the entry to Turn 7 and eliminated an astonished Bird.
Envision Virgin Racing
Robin Frijns – 7
Positions: 4th/18th
Championship position: 3rd
Frijns was the pick of the group one qualifiers for Saturday’s race and looked to be in one of his veins of form where he vanquishes all before him.
But it never quite happened. Despite a strong start to the race, where he ran briefly second, the pace petered out and he fell away to an eventual fourth. A degree of over consumption was believed to have been caused by a settings glitch around the energy target management.
Saturday’s positivity was eroded by a dire Sunday when he brushed a wall in qualifying, leaving him 18th on the grid.
Then in the race Frijns apparently tried to execute a strategy plan to hang back as much as possible under the safety car the start. All it did was hack off many of those behind him and gain him a penalty that turned his 13th place finish into 18th in the final classification after a penalty for not using his third attack mode was thrown in for good measure.
Nick Cassidy – 7
Positions: 15th/DNF
Championship position: 21st
Cassidy looked completely on it from the first lap of practice and embraced the challenge of the new undulating track. He just over-cooked it in qualifying by bending his driveshaft against a wall and paid a heavy price by being confined to 22nd on the grid.
From there the Kiwi knew he’d have to get his elbows out in the race but he overstepped the mark when engaged in combat with Dennis, so despite finishing 10th on the road he was shuffled down to a 15th place classification.
A brilliant first pole on Sunday followed as he finally caught a break. But there was no luck involved at all as he destroyed the opposition in the damp with deft laps to claim his maiden Formula E pole and as a result his first points.
It all turned to dust in the race itself with a spin on the opening lap and then an accident with Rowland. Cassidy never gave up and ploughed on but eventually parked it two laps from the end.
BMW i Andretti Motorsport
Maximilian Guenther – 7
Positions: 9th/5th
Championship position: 15th
Guenther arrived in Rome impatient to banish the ghosts of Diriyah’s double shunt DNF status and he kind of did that with a reasonable points haul and flashes of promise after the team’s slow start to the new campaign.
Guenther did a fine job to get into Super Pole 2 on both occasions, although his carried over 5-place grid drop from Diriyah ensured a P11 start for race one in Rome.’
An 11th place start from group four was not a brilliant start but then in a strong race he survived an outrageous spin at the Turn 6 kink, from which he was fortunate to emerge with just cosmetic rear-end damage, to take two points for ninth.
A fine Sunday qualifying lap got him back into superpole for the first time since last August and a fifth place start was solidified with a fifth place finish. It would have been fourth had Mortara’s paranormal reflexes not kicked in on the final lap.
Jake Dennis – 6
Positions: DNF/13th
Championship position: 24th
Dennis’s Rome weekend started horrendously when he was rear-ended by Turvey in Saturday morning’s needless accident. Despite fine efforts by his BMW i Andretti to get him out for qualifying, he was not on the pace.
His race ended, as they had in Diriyah, via the hands of a competitor after Cassidy broke his front suspension while challenging for 16th place.
Dennis is suffering from whatever the opposite of beginner’s luck is, and this was evidenced by being unable to take part in Sunday qualifying when his car inexplicably went in to ‘red mode’.
This enforced a back of the grid start but to his credit Dennis made a race of it, dicing with Dragon Penskes and setting the third fastest lap of the race.
Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler
Lucas di Grassi – 8
Positions: DNF/DNF
Championship position: 18th
Ironically, di Grassi looked as dangerous as he has for some time in Rome, yet he came away with nothing and none of that was really down to his own performance.
The di Grassi qualifying mojo tends to be erratic but when it’s good it’s very good and this time it netted a fine fourth place start. From there he built a strong race and was able to get his nose into the lead courtesy of an obliging Vergne at Turn 7.
Would he have won the race had his driveshaft held out? Audi thinks so, but Vergne was not so sure. It would have needed some force to have prised di Grassi’s fingers away from a first winner’s trophy in almost two years.
Big moment for @LucasdiGrassi, the season 3 champion is out of the race…brings out the Full Course Yellow #RomeEPrix
Live updates here >> https://t.co/sHOKGxvLZW pic.twitter.com/Z6TawQLxBB
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) April 11, 2021
He placed 13th on the grid for race two after a hairy, lairy and frankly quite scary qualifying lap. Good progress was made in the early laps before the now infamous collision with Buemi occurred somewhat ironically at almost the precise spot where he parked his car just 20 hours before.
Rene Rast – 7
Positions: 6th/DNF
Championship position: 11th
Rast blotted his copybook in Saturday qualifying with an episode at Turn 14 that anchored him to a lowly 20th place on the grid.
But he more than made up for it with another shrewd drive through the field in one of the performances of the race to achieve a net 14-place swing and end up with sixth placed points.
Rast struggled to plant his Audi in the first qualifying group session on Sunday and was forced to start 19th. The hope was he could reprise his heroics from the day before but the going was considerably harder this time, although he did make a very good fist of it.
A bad day at the office for @audisport as @ReneRastRacing crashes out of the race, meaning a double-DNF for the squad.
Live updates here >> https://t.co/sHOKGxvLZW #RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/Jt8jfl7n7u
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) April 11, 2021
He was sitting in 11th place and eying points when he glanced a wall. The impact broke a wishbone and caused him to spear off into another wall on the run down to Turn 3.
Jaguar Racing
Mitch Evans – 9
Positions: 3rd/6th
Championship position: 2nd
Evans started race one two places behind team-mate Bird in 12th but built an excellent race showing consistent pace throughout to pick his way through the field.
He latched onto Bird’s tail eventually after dices with Lotterer and Vandoorne and claimed an excellent third.
On Sunday Evans was in at the deep end in the first qualifying group and just one full power lap in wet conditions resulted in another 12th on the grid, which was a major damage limitation win given the circumstances.
In the race he ran with Buemi for most of the first half but eventually moved ahead by carefully judging who, where and when he could and should attack.
Like his Saturday drive it was a calculated race that maximised his grid position and much more to ensure he netted the third biggest points haul of the weekend and climbed from fourth to second in the standings while increasing Jaguar’s lead in the teams’ title chase.
Sam Bird – 9
Positions: 2nd/DNF
Championship position: 1st
Bird dazzled again on Saturday when an solid group one qualifying performance netted a 10th place start.
Executing some typically amazing overtakes, particularly on de Vries and then Frijns for fourth place, he did well to avoid the mayhem around him and could feasibly have snatched a win such was his momentum. The lengthy safety car put paid to the possibility of two wins from three, yet a runner-up position was an excellent achievement.
On Sunday Bird survived one major ‘crisis moment’ on his qualifying lap to top the most hostile opening qualifying group in terms of conditions and start a hard-earned 11th.
His race never really caught alight as it had in race two at Diriyah and in the first Rome event as he appeared to be slightly compromised with his strategy.
A result and a potential increase of his points lead was taken away from him when he got collected by an out of shape de Vries on the final lap.
TAG-Heuer Porsche
Andre Lotterer – 6
Positions: 14th/15th
Championship position: 20th
Lotterer went into the weekend as the most successful driver to race in Rome but left it with a big bag of nothing.
Little of it was his fault however because if there were penalties or issues going, Lotterer got force fed them in what was one of Porsche’s messiest FE weekends to date.
It all started so promisingly with a front-row start on Saturday after a strong lap. But as soon as the race began things went downhill with a collision when trying to wrest the lead from a slightly hesitant Vandoorne on lap one. The subsequent penalty rooted him to 14th place.
HUGE HUGE DRAMA at the start of the race as race-leaders Stoffel Vandoorne and Andre Lotterer collided 😳
Watch live here >> https://t.co/sHOKGxvLZW#RomeEPrix pic.twitter.com/TlGK7hV3ik
— ABB FIA Formula E World Championship (@FIAFormulaE) April 10, 2021
While there should have been a reset, things start off poorly on Sunday with a power over-use penalty in qualifying. This anchored Lotterer to the rear of the grid and then he took yet another sanction for his team changing powertrain parts between qualifying and the race.
It all resulted in a lonely run to a dejected 15th position.
Pascal Wehrlein – 9
Positions: 7th/3rd
Championship position: 6th
‘
Strong but seemed to curiously fade’ might become one of those copy and paste phrases for Wehrlein this season because again it became a topic thread throughout his weekend.
In truth he barely put a foot wrong in his most impressive races by far in Porsche colours and gathered sufficient points to leap in to sixth place in the standings. But there was still more than an element of disappointment at Porsche that it can’t yet challenge for its maiden win.
Wehrlein is the only driver to score points in every race and he was on excellent form all weekend with a measured run to seventh on Saturday and his first Porsche podium today.
Yes he got his pocket picked by a wily Sims and the pace seemed to curiously fade (command + C to copy) in and out but on pure driving performance he was one of the most consistent stars of the show this weekend.
Mahindra Racing
Alexander Sims – 8
Positions: DNF/2nd
Championship position: 9th
Sims’ Saturday was ruined by contact from Sette Camara’s Dragon Penske which punctured his car and sent his right rear Michelin flailing off the rim.
A day later a superlative qualifying lap launched him into superpole for the first time since Diriyah in November 2019. Mysteriously Sims was at a loss to understand why that form didn’t carry across when it really counted but a sixth place start was a strong foundation to build a decent race.
That is exactly what he did and although overtakes were minimal, he made arguably the best of the whole contest when he mugged Wehrlein as the race went green after the first caution. That gained Mahindra its best result since the 2019 Santiago E-Prix, delighting team boss Dilbagh Gill.
Alex Lynn – 6
Positions: 8th/17th
Championship position: 20th
Lynn and Mahindra couldn’t muster the flashes of qualifying pace shown in Diriyah, so a 13th place start on Saturday was a relative anti-climax.
A brief off in free practice at the chicane was shaken off quickly on Sunday but his qualifying lap was a disappointment with massive oversteer hindering his progress and he started down in 16th.
Lynn drove a solid first race to eighth and was hunting for points on Sunday when he got a lucky break via the de Vries and Bird shunt. That though was shortlived as he was one of three drivers to get hit with a drivethrough penalty converted to 30-seconds for not using the required trio of mandatory attack mode activations.
ROKiT Venturi Racing
Edoardo Mortara – 8
Positions: DNF/4th
Championship position: 7th
Saturday was more or less a write-off for Mortara, which was a shame as it had started positively with a completed programme in the first practice session.
The problems started as he prepared for qualifying when his car refused to power up and he missed taking the line to set his lap before the chequered flag came out.
Things didn’t improve for the race and he was an early retirement with damage after hitting a slowing Sette Camara as the Penske dived for the pitlane.
Sunday brought some recompense with a committed qualifying lap just not quite good enough for superpole but impressive considering the conditions for group two.
His race was equally accomplished with decisive moves and an unbelievable startled-feline type save on the final lap while defending fourth place from Guenther.
Norman Nato – 8
Positions: 11th/DSQ
Championship position: 22nd
Nato showed good pace in Saturday practice but his qualifying lap and the race was compromised. He picked up some of the trackside advertising banners, which lost him significant time during the race and affected his steering.
He made the most of favourable improving track conditions in qualifying on Sunday to grab a surprise but richly merited front-row start. He raced smartly all race, didn’t panic when he had to relinquish positions, and recouped them like a veteran to cross the line third.
His subsequent disqualification for running out of useable energy was a cruel blow. But the bigger picture is he has proved he can mix it at the front in only his third Formula E start.
Dragon Penske
Nico Mueller – 6
Positions: 13th/9th
Championship position: 14th
Most of the Diriyah momentum was lost for Mueller after qualifying when he could muster no better than 17th on the grid. He ran with team-mate Sette Camara in the early laps before a drivethrough penalty for an overpower spike was applied and rooted him to 13th.
A solid job in group three on Sunday netted a ninth place start and in the race he was running well but got bundled aside by a fiery Bird.
Pace wise the old Penske EV-4 had very little indeed and he dropped like a stone down the field until multiple penalties and keeping his nose relatively clean somehow garnered him two points for ninth in the final classification.
Sergio Sette Camara – 5
Positions: 16th/12th
Championship position: 13th
Sette Camara’s Saturday was messy with, like team-mate Mueller, not even a hint of the promising Diriyah qualifying pace, irrespective of being in group two where he was 1.4 seconds off the group pace.
A lowly 16th place start resulted and despite an initial lively dice with Dennis his race was compromised, again like Mueller, by serving a drivethrough for overpowering.
He took the chequered flag in 15th but slipped a further place after getting a five second post-race penalty for speeding under full course yellows.
Sunday did little to improve the Brazilian’s mood when he dropped it in qualifying, meaning he would start 22nd. Like Mueller he had little in the way of genuine pace and faded into the background to eventually take 12th place.
NIO333
Oliver Turvey – 4
Positions: DNS/14th
Championship position: 17th
Turvey’s Saturday ended spectacularly with that infamous startline crash in practice which meant a new car had to be built-up piecemeal because the NIO333 team did not have a pre-prepared new tub available.
It was an ultra-rare aberration from the famously astute driver, who seldom makes racing errors let alone colossal procedural ones like that.
That meant it was all about Sunday and Turvey at least got a race distance in with the newly built-up car.
The pitlane start penalty was carried over but it was compounded by Frijns’ bizarre dithering at the start and Turvey was unable to make significant progress and placed 14th.
Despite that he took some solace in racking up some miles and was effusive in his praise for the NIO333 team’s efforts in getting him back on track.
Tom Blomqvist – 8
Positions: 10th/8th
Championship position: 19th
Blomqvist continued to build on his and the team’s Diriyah promise but it was done the hard way after a relatively innocuous Turn 14 shunt in the first practice session.
In reality it pushed a team that was thrown into temporary turmoil after Turvey’s monster shunt to the limits. Blomqvist was still able to qualify 18th although this frustratingly became 21st when he was adjudged to have entered the fast lane too early.
A relatively straightforward, compared to some of those around him, drive to 11th followed but finally some luck came his way as fellow-ish Kiwi Cassidy dropped to 11th due to a penalty.
Blomqvist took further points on Sunday with a well-judged run to eighth place, which involved some luck from penalties but also rewarded a result built around patience and a bit of racing guile.
