Untold stories behind Formula E's five biggest 2024 flashpoints

Formula E was perhaps somehow even more dramatic than usual both on and off-track in 2024.

Sam Smith picks his five most dramatic moments or sagas of the year, and reveals some of what went on behind the scenes of those storylines in the paddock.

5 - Bird's last-gasp Sao Paulo win

On the surface: Sam Bird had a rough final few years at Jaguar.

By the summer of 2023 he was out of the team and it was clear there was a lot going on in his life.

It became known publicly this September, when Bird appeared as a guest on The Race's Formula E 10th anniversary special podcast, that troubles in his personal life, via a difficult divorce, had obviously and understandably affected him.

It's often forgotten or just plain overlooked that racing drivers go through all the same difficulties in actual life that most have to deal with at one time or another. To do so in the full glare of a pressure sport like racing has to be extraordinarily difficult.

By the start of 2024, Bird looked refreshed and poised again. At McLaren he was having a rebirth. Diriyah in February gave a glimpse of what he could achieve, then came Sao Paulo.

It boiled down to Bird hunting down a thermally challenged Jaguar of Mitch Evans on the last lap and - although he was managing temperatures on his battery too, even deliberately ducking out of the Jaguar's slipstream - Bird pulled off the move of the season to take a dramatic win at the penultimate corner.

Behind the scenes: Bird and The Race didn't speak at all for six months at the end of 2023 and into early 2024. 

Niggles between us from the 2023 Rome E-Prix weekend, when The Race broke the news of Nick Cassidy taking Bird's Jaguar seat, got out of control.

At Mexico City in January this year we had coffee. The air was cleared and adults came to the surface again after it had all got a bit 'school playground' between him and I during the previous summer. That was pleasing.

Bird has always prided himself in consistency in Formula E. Yet, when it went missing in 2022 and then the situation festered the following year, the Jaguar dream was over and he had to deal with a maze of issues on and off the track. That he did it and came back strongly is a massive testament to his mental stamina and fortitude.

That day in Sao Paulo I, like many in the paddock, found myself willing Bird to give it a go on his former team-mate Evans. We don't have favourites on this side of the fence but sometimes the human story overrides neutrality and when he made that move stick I too banged the media centre table for a brief moment in admiration.

In the pits afterwards, Bird's McLaren boss Ian James posed with his charge and the team for photos. Bird's famous pearly smile was back and it was hard not to feel very pleased for him after all he'd been through.

4 - Silly-season mayhem

On the surface: 'He's signed what?'. 'They've signed who?'.

Driver market activity in Formula E is always fun. It usually runs between approximately April and July and in 2024 it was as volatile as ever. Keeping tabs on it all is a full-time job in itself and usually the real action is away from the track and the paddock.

There were plenty of games being played this summer and it was commonplace for drivers to seek The Race's counsel and opinion on what might or might not be going on.

That was often tricky with several drivers having multiple options at times. Complicating it further was the extra dynamic of drivers who were contesting a dual Formula E/World Endurance Championship programme. There was already the headache of how that might be received by a potential new FE team, and then in June came news there would be another infuriating calendar clash in 2025: Interlagos and Berlin in July, just at a crucial point in the season for the Formula E title and its likely destination.

Unlike the 2024 clash Spa WEC/Berlin FE clash, there was no chance of a cheeky jet to take drivers between events. (Ultimately on that occasion the rules prevented them from doing double duty, although several did make it for the Sunday to at least support their replacements, and Andre Lotterer went from Porsche 963 cockpit to FE commentating duties in the space of 12 hours!)

For the 2024-25 season, the driver market activity was prodigious, with an unforeseen big question upon which it all pivoted: would Antonio Felix da Costa stay at Porsche? That saga deserves a section in itself so we'll return to it later.

Instead, Stoffel Vandoorne, Jake Hughes and Maximilian Guenther's moves between and into Stellantis-brand teams became the real keys, as did Nico Mueller weighing up multiple offers. The placid Mueller ultimately became a lynchpin in all the movements.

Behind the scenes: The da Costa situation apart, Vandoorne's future was the really interesting aspect of the driver market in 2024.

The 2022 champion had a disappointing season and a half at DS Penske. He and the team both expected a lot more from one of Formula E's biggest-ever moves - from outgoing Mercedes to DS Penske, which was completed in April 2022 just before Vandoorne sealed the title in Mercedes' farewell event.

By early summer 2024 Vandoorne knew he wouldn't get a third season at DS Penske and behind the scenes Guenther was already in advanced discussion to move from Maserati MSG and replace Vandoorne as Jean-Eric Vergne's team-mate.

Vandoorne had started to have serious discussions with Envision, probably to replace Robin Frijns. Right up until the final race in London, Frijns was unsure about his future at the team and although Vandoorne had agreed a move to Maserati and to keep his racing programme within the Stellantis umbrella, there was still a possibility of being in green for 2024-25 right up until that London finale.

This undulating scenario was just one cog in a fascinating machine. It was all great entertainment unless you were actually in it!

3 - Cassidy spins away the title

On the surface: A lap and a bit. A lap and a bloody bit!

In all likelihood, that was all that was in front of Cassidy, and all that had to be completed at Portland to get an iron grip on his first Formula E title.

Then he was slightly off line for the challenging but relatively straightforward Turn 10 left/right flick before the final corner. With 20-odd cars in one long weaving streak behind him, there was pressure.

Except there wasn't really. His Jaguar team-mate Evans was right behind and had a penalty - an unfair penalty, but a penalty, nonetheless. There shouldn't have been pressure but in the world of peloton racing, close proximity breeds it.

Cassidy lost it momentarily, and tried to correct it. Too late. As he lazily spun to the rear of the field it was hard not to feel sympathy. But the upshot was he'd lost a title-fight-defining 25 points and he knew it.

"There were a few chains of events but at the end of the day I made a really big error that I'll regret," Cassidy said at the time. "I was off-line and I was deep. Just a big, big error.

"I believe winning that race would have locked in the title today."

Behind the scenes: The Jaguar pit was febrile after the first Portland E-Prix that Saturday in late June. Reading the body language of those emerging from the rear of it was fascinating. Dejection, anger and shock were the expressions on most faces.

While bosses James Barclay and general manager Gary Ekerold flitted between the pits and stewards' office to argue Evans's case in his overly harsh penalty for being seen to have blocked Hughes, in what was really a nothing incident, Cassidy was being consoled by his side of the garage.

The deeper questions though were percolating away. Why wasn't there a clearer instruction for Evans, running second, to hold up the pack more and give Cassidy breathing space?

It was another question of team play, and how and when to use it. Jaguar had done it brilliantly in Monaco, not so brilliantly at Berlin and Shanghai, and now at Portland Cassidy felt a bit screwed over. It wouldn't be the last time he felt a bit like that.

Cassidy goes his own way on race weekends. In his own words, strategically he's not one of his New Zealand homeland's most well-known exports - a sheep!

"If you see the sheep running one way, run the other. It might work out," he mused after that Portland error.

"It's funny though, because we've got so much data in this sport and we've got such smart people in pitlane that if you do one of these races and it's the same amount of laps or a very similar format for the next time, most people are going to do an ideal strategy.

"What I mean by that is just, together with my guys we're working so hard to try and be one step ahead of that and work out what's going to happen next, how can we position ourselves?"

2 - Jaguar's bittersweet finale

On the surface: Jaguar won and lost all in the space of 50 minutes at the ExCeL in July.

It fully deserved its first silverware for an excellent teams' and manufacturers' title double but the headlines were all about Porsche's Pascal Wehrlein snatching the drivers' title from under Cassidy and Evans's noses.

Heading into the final race of the season, Evans was three points adrift and Cassidy seven of Wehrlein, who had scored a brilliant win the day before.

The drama ratcheted up several notches ahead of the crucial qualifying session on Sunday when Cassidy lost the early-morning practice session to a technical issue. That would surely mean his title aspirations were dead. But not so.

A herculean performance in qualifying brought Cassidy his first pole for Jaguar, and it was perhaps the best ever seen in Formula E. With Guenther a title fight interloper on the front row and Evans third ahead of Wehrlein, the scene was set for a thriller.

Jaguar led 1-2 into the first corner with Cassidy in charge. In the early running they were in complete control as Guenther acted as a buffer to Wehrlein. But when the Porsche slipped through into third, Jaguar appeared to then panic and things began to fall apart.

A series of missteps in how Cassidy and Evans worked together let Wehrlein in and he took the title after Cassidy was caught, turfed-off by da Costa, and Evans missed his attack mode loops twice.

Porsche and Wehrlein could barely believe their luck and overturned a 12-point deficit heading to ExCeL into a six-point winning margin.

Behind the scenes: Jaguar had its best ever season in 2024 with record points and two titles: one official (teams'), one not (manufacturers'). It deserved a giant pat on the back for an excellent season.

Yet, there under the podium after the final race, two of its senior members appeared to be in a state of shock.

Ekerold and Craig Wilson have been a fundamental part of Jaguar's success. They have been in it since the start and facilitated a great deal of the technical and sporting make-up of Jaguar's successful return to racing in 2016.

They're the kind of people too that give you a straight answer if asked a straight question. But at this time their facial expressions told of a 'too soon' notion as they tried to process what they and the team had just been through.

Up on the podium, Evans had a face as cold and foreboding as the Royal Victoria Dock outside. Team principal Barclay was at least enjoying the teams' and manufacturers' successes, but the cocktail of jollity (Barclay) and despair (Evans) was almost painful to watch.

The immediate fallout was dramatic. Evans, clearly furious, was in no mood for chit chat and completed his media commitments with a steely stare. Cassidy, the much more openly emotional of the two, was holding back the tears, mostly of frustration. It made for a very charged atmosphere.

While Evans had to be coaxed into frequenting the end of season gala, Cassidy quietly huddled with his side of the garage and an overall air of sadness permeated. His friendship with New Zealand compatriot Evans is real and has been since childhood but this was a major test.

Both drivers were in fact in a similar boat. Evans had been close to the title before, notably in 2021 when a mysterious, and some say controversial, inverter issue on the grid at Berlin ended his chances even before Edoardo Mortara careered into his prone Jaguar.

In 2023 Cassidy, as an Envision driver, was trying to keep a long-shot title chance alive when weak calls from his team snuffed out a strong position after team-mate Sebastien Buemi inadvertently damaged his front wing.

So, while the pair from the same city (Auckland), in the same team (Jaguar) and with the same ambition and desire (to be a world champion) felt the same, they appeared miles apart on that Sunday evening in the east end of London.

1 - Da Costa's shaky Porsche future

On the surface: The year's most unlikely, breathtaking and multiple-threaded Formula E story was a true epic.

A terrible start to 2024 for da Costa in his second season at Porsche felt like just a blip at first but it took on a life of its own - and perhaps in hindsight the sometimes emotional da Costa didn't help himself with how honest and self-flagellating he was after Diriyah in January.

"I don't know who I am when I'm not quick, when I'm not performing. I've never been here before," he told The Race in Saudi Arabia.

There was more - a lot more - and it added some grist to Porsche's mill and perhaps caused it to lose a bit of faith in its driver. At least some in the team did and in all likelihood one of those was on-the-ground boss Florian Modlinger.

He was rightly concerned by da Costa's form and in the seven-week gap from Diriyah to Sao Paulo a whole lot went on in that team.

The most interesting aspect was that Modlinger's old DTM charge Mueller - racing in Formula E for Abt last season - was tapped up for a test in Spain. Under maximum secrecy, Mueller drove the Porsche development car. Da Costa is believed to have been aware but outside of that small circle no one knew.

That was, until Tokyo, three weeks later. More on that in a moment. 

The fallout from that test was sizeable and the da Costa/Porsche unease was palpable every time you were in or around their garage.

But a marvellous thing happened. Da Costa found his form again and went on an amazing streak of success. Five wins (one at Misano scratched for the infamous throttle spring debacle) and an outside and unlikely crack at the title followed.

He played the dutiful team-mate to Wehrlein genuinely and a new professional calm appeared to come over him as the season went on.

But even by June there was no guarantee that da Costa would see out the third season of his contract and he was openly talking to other teams and manufacturers. 

The rifts now seem to be patched up. That's a whole lot easier to do when you are winning, I guess.

Behind the scenes: On the Thursday of the Tokyo E-Prix, The Race founder Andrew van de Burgt and I were nursing considerable hangovers in the pits. As we chatted to one senior Formula E figure, a pleasant but relatively banal conversation was coming to an end.

"Anything else interesting happening?" I asked.

"Not really… oh actually yeah, I heard that Porsche tested Nico Mueller the other week."

Double-take time! 

And then Andrew and I look at each other slightly wide-eyed.

Check the schedule. Next appointment? Modlinger at Porsche. Perfect!

His reaction to my opening question of 'Did Nico Mueller test for you?' was met with a mixture of reflex shock and recalibration of the conversation.

Remarkable Porsche-da Costa saga ends in a deal

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Despite the relative non-answer, the fact Mueller had tested was mostly confirmed through awkward body language and subsequently firmed up.

The story was written over the next few days but we elected to hold off until after the Tokyo weekend to maximise it in the knowledge no one else would be near it.

The upshot of it all was that the da Costa and Porsche rift was now out in the open. It must have been uncomfortable but it was what it was. A clash of characters that were wired very differently.

It was exactly the kind of story that makes motorsport such a fascinating world and long may it continue.