until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League
If Nick Cassidy’s prior stealth mode of grabbing a hat-trick of podiums in Hyderabad, Cape Town and Sao Paulo didn’t sound a title challenger alarm then his neatly judged win at Berlin certainly did.
The Envision driver executed a stunning drive that emulated similar breakaways by Antonio Felix da Costa (in Cape Town) and Mitch Evans (Sao Paulo) that had denied him an earlier 2023 victory.
Add in to that the infuriating defensive driving masterclass by Jean-Eric Vergne in Hyderabad, which denied Cassidy a certain win, and it felt like there was just a hint of restorative justice in his excellent driver Berlin win.
The fact it came on the quirky Tempelhof surface via the quirky Aucklander, will have also meant so much to the Green Army from Silverstone.
It was here in 2021 and again last May when the then Audi-powered team hit season nadirs. For whatever reason it just never happened for them on those occasions. Now, with the sumptuously efficient Jaguar, it was swept through arrivals serenely and departed via the business class VIP exit trailing shiny winners’ pots and pans.
For Cassidy it came after a fractious day in which he had unloaded an irritable, and bizarrely amusing tirade at team-mate Sebastien Buemi. Was it this irritation that he channelled into extra energy?
That’s what it felt like because Cassidy, like everyone in the Envision team, is just beyond the honeymoon period of Sebastien Buemi joining the team.
Buemi, as wily and constructively aggressive a professional racing driver as you’ll see, has brought a new dynamic to the team. It’s bound to take a while for everyone to get used to the white heat of the Swiss ace’s pure and unadulterated drive.
That’s not to say that the pair dislike each other. Far from it in fact. They genuinely have a great deal of mutual respect.
If the occasional spike of antagonism reaches peaks, as it did briefly today, then Sylvain Filippi and co will actually be rubbing their hands.
Deep inside Cassidy will be too. 86 points in five races is an immense haul and to follow three podiums, and a fifth place with a victory, even on a track he doesn’t like, puts Cassidy in a very promising position.
“It’s yet to sink in to be honest because, historically, I’ve been so bad at this track,” Cassidy told The Race.
“I can say now that the weekend has finished but I still don’t like [the track].
“For a few races, I thought we were in the box seat and we didn’t get it done, so it was nice to change that today. To be honest, with everything we’ve learnt and the team have really tried to understand every situation and what we could have done differently, reviewed everything, it’s really paid off.”
An important hub of the race was his move from sixth to third in one fell swoop at Turn 6. It was a move of great opportunism and one that was eventually telling for victory.
“When I got to the lead initially I wasn’t sure, but then there was suddenly a point among that period that I was sure I wanted to keep the lead,” he said.
“But I think everyone was wanting to sit fourth and it wasn’t easy to do that, especially when you’re lifting because everyone who’s eighth is trying to go to fourth and everyone who’s fourth is trying to stay there and everyone who’s leading is trying to go back.
“You get this bottleneck effect which, sometimes, provided some entertaining moments but the majority of it was OK.”
The win had extra meaning for Cassidy’s engineer Robert Sattler who will leave his position after the Monaco race next month.
“It’s so cool for him,” he said.”Last year was tough for us but obviously we’re having so much fun this year. To get him a win is just awesome because he’s a super talented guy and super enjoyable to work with, so it’s really cool.”
At the halfway mark of the championship, Cassidy is now within four points of Pascal Wehrlein who has scraped 22 points in the previous five races. The veneer of his lead is getting thinner now for the Porsche driver and Cassidy is clearly smelling blood.
“I think we all try to [go for the championship] but you see how chaotic these races are and whether you win or finish ninth, there’s not much in it in one or two bad calls either way can change that outcome,” he said.
“We’ve been lucky, we’ve had a good run but that can end tomorrow, that can end in Monaco, I’m very aware of that.
“I’ve just got to keep trying my best to do every race as we can. But so far it’s been a dream run.”
