Pre-season favourite Mercedes EQ are struggling to convert its raw qualifying pace into executing race victories largely due to a combination of not completely perfecting the balance of its cars and the different rhythm of races this season, according to both Stoffel Vandoorne and Nyck de Vries.
The new qualifying format this season is generating a slightly different style of intense racing due to a purer grid hierarchy, that is more punishing due to the inherent closeness of the leading cars in the final season of Gen2.
So far this season both Vandoorne and De Vries haven’t been able to convert pole position performances into race victories. But this is likely to become an increasing feature of 2022-spec Formula E racing.
While Vandoorne and de Vries had opposing races in terms of competitiveness and results at Rome today, fundamentally they both struggled, at different stages of the race and to varying degrees, with ultimate pace.
Vandoorne took a second pole from three appearances in Rome and initially looked to be staking a victory claim in the early stages – but was unable to resist a flying Mitch Evans and a tenacious Robin Frijns.
Although Vandoorne declared his result to be “a good consolidation and a good result”, there was some disappointment in the Mercedes EQ garage after both cars had shown such strong qualifying pace earlier in the day.
“I don’t think our race pace was a disaster, it was just not on the level of Mitch today,” Vandoorne told The Race.
“I had a great fight with Robin, but obviously, leading the race at the start and having all the big guys behind you, you’re a little bit limited with what you can do strategy-wise.
“We kind of had to react to attack modes, based on what the others were doing at the start.
“Then with Robin, we were kind of fighting it out to regain the lead, every time it would have been [in] the last few seconds of attack mode, so we were definitely not the most efficient in that phase of the race.”
The Mercedes EQ driver agreed that the new-for-2022 qualifying system had seen the intensity of races at the front “cranked up another notch compared to last year”.
“That’s because last year you’d have five or six of the championship guys kind of running behind a little bit, and you’d always have a bit of a buffer from cars that are not in position and that you have to clear and then they waste a bit of energy.”
Team-mate de Vries, while on paper also in a strong early position, in fact realised quickly that he would struggle to hold on to the leading bunch of cars.
“The truth is that it was very different from the beginning, we were really trying to hang on to stay in front,” the reigning series champion told The Race.
“We didn’t have the right balance and then obviously we need to use some energy to keep ourselves among the top three.
“I think we positioned ourselves well, in terms of the start and the first lap, the restart and everything, but when you don’t have the pace, then you’re just struggling to keep it up there.
“That’s kind of the situation we find ourselves in, and then you get pressure from behind you if you don’t have the sufficient gaps to go for the attack mode, and when someone smells blood, you get overtaken.”
Formula E drivers this season are then often forced into a familiar dilemma. Either let the attacks play out and relinquish positions or defend, spend the energy and then immediately be on the back foot from a strategy point of view.
This was precisely the scenario de Vries in Rome and it must have been endured with just a touch of deja vu because he was forced to play with a similarly poor hand of cards in Diriyah two months ago.
De Vries was relatively sanguine about his day but admitted that the different challenge of winning 2022-spec Formula E races required “now completely optimum performance all the tim.”.
“I think Stoffel did well to kind of execute P3 because the truth is I think as a team, we were just not quite competitive enough,” he added.
Unlike the second Diriyah race in January, de Vries was unable to salvage even a point after an incident with Pascal Wehrlein’s Porsche at Turn 7 with two laps remaining bent his steering terminally.
“I tried to overtake Pascal into T7 and I was kind of a little bit alongside him, and he defended to the wall, and I got stuck in between him [and the wall] and I bent my steering,” De Vries said of the incident.
The reigning champion was penalised for the incident, receiving a three-place drop and two penalty points on his license.
