Pascal Wehrlein took his third victory of the Formula E Race at Home series to reclaim the points advantage over Stoffel Vandoorne ahead of tomorrow’s finale in Berlin.
Prior to the race Mahindra driver Wehrlein drew level one points with erstwhile standings leader Stoffel Vandoorne by taking pole position on the simulated Red Hook street track in New York City.
Wehrlein struggled with an alternative camera view on his screen when he switched it just prior to the start after his view of the starting lights was obscured by the halo on his Mahindra M6ELECTRO.
Opening up a small gap to debutant Kelvin van der Linde, who has stepped into Daniel Abt’s vacant seat at Audi, Wehrlein controlled a steady advantage over his opposition throughout the race.
Van der Linde drove a faultless race but was unable to challenge Wehrlein at any stage and quickly dropped back into the clutches of Oliver Rowland.
The Nissan e.dams driver applied significant pressure to the Audi in the latter stages and executed a muscular move in the final corners to snatch second place and demote van der Linde to the final rung of the podium.
The main action in the early stages of the penultimate Race at Home Challenge round centred on the battle for third position. This was a brawny battle between Rowland, Maximilian Guenther and Vandoorne.
Starting in fifth place Vandoorne muscled his way passed both the Nissan and BMW drivers but then suffered contact with Guenther.
This broke up the battle and suspected damage to Vandoorne’s Mercedes meant he was unable to make progress, ensuring his demotion to second in the points table with a fourth placed finish.
That leaves Vandoorne 22 points behind Wehrlein with just one race to go, although double points are available in the finale.
Like Vandoorne, Guenther also struggled for most of the race after the earlier contact and came home a subdued fifth.
Behind the BMW i Andretti Motorsport racer came the ROKiT Venturi pair Felipe Massa and Eduardo Mortara, while Antonio Felix da Costa, Robin Frijns and Oliver Turvey filled out the remainder of the points scorers.
Lucas Mueller took a clear Challenge Race victory after converting his pole position to head home runaway championship points leader Kevin Siggy, starting what became a clean sweep for his and Wehrlein’s Mahindra team.
Mueller led from lights-to-flag and was never seriously challenged by Siggy’s BMW.
Siggy was already guaranteed on pole position ahead of tomorrow’s winner takes all finale in Berlin where drivers will fight it out for a real life Formula E test.
Joshua Rogers was on the tail of Siggy for most of the race but a mistake lost him momentum at mid-distance and he had to settle for the final step of the podium.
Kush Maini, the brother of sometime Formula 2 driver Arjun, took his best finish so far with DS Techeetah in fourth.
