In the previous six Formula E races in Monaco, only four victories have been achieved by a pole starter, and today the classic city circuit has taken another turn to the point where the qualifying winner failed to even make it onto the podium.
In 2023, Jake Hughes started the race from pole position, and when the starting lights went out, his orange electric McLaren McLaren continued to lead. However, he was closely followed by a duo of Nissan pilots – Sasha Fenestrasz came in second, who was naturally offended that he had been stripped of first position.
Interestingly, many of the top riders in the individual standings weren’t even in the top 10 on this stage – with the exception of Mitch Evans, who ran sixth, and Nick Cassidy, the winner of the previous Berlin stage, stuck behind him.
Given the nature of the track in Monaco, the first five laps were minimal, but only 21 cars remained on the track – Andre Lotterer, a Porsche driver, retired almost immediately for technical reasons.
But on the fifth lap, the aforementioned Cassidy made a daring attack and in one maneuver in the hairpin of the Grand Hotel got ahead of two rivals, moved up to fifth position, and after one more lap attacked Norman NATO and let him also behind.
Hughes, who was in the lead, was one of the first to activate the high power mode, for which he went off track, and Fenestrasz soon followed suit, so Cassidy took the lead on the 8th lap.
On the ninth lap, Attack Mode was activated by Cassidy and Nato, so another shift in the top five occurred: Dan Tiktum was in front, then Evans, followed by Fenestrasz and Jack Dennis, and Cassidy was in 5th place. But on lap 10 he overtook the Andretti driver and moved up to 4th place.
While the other pilots in the leading group took advantage of the attack mode on lap 10, Cassidy moved into first position, followed by Evans, and Fenestrasz lost about half a second to him.
When he was more than half the distance behind him, experienced fighter Mitch Evans began to prepare a decisive attack on the leader: he was close behind Cassidy and on the 16th lap he was ahead of him on the start and finish straight completely for. Although he failed to create a noticeable gap, it seemed that he would no longer give up this position. However, Nick soon managed to bounce back thanks to a competent attack in the 1st turn.
On lap 17, António Felix da Costa’s Porsche was damaged by contact with other cars at the exit of the tunnel, and one of its tires punctured and the Portuguese spun into the pits.
With eight laps to go, Cassidy was leading under pressure from Evans, Dennis was third, Fenestrasz was fourth and Tiktum closed out the top five.
But Evans’ car had more power in the batteries than the race leader, and the team tasked Mitch to use that to take the lead. The New Zealand Jaguar driver tried to take action, but Nick – his compatriot, incidentally – defended himself skillfully.
On the 22nd lap, Max Gunther’s damaged car stalled on the track: the German tried to attack Tiktum, but made a mistake and crashed into the British car from behind. The electric safety car left.
On the replay of the highlights, it was clear that Dan’s car was also damaged, as he had become a participant in other incidents a little earlier, causing him to drive relatively slowly, which probably surprised Gunther.
On the 24th of 29 laps of the race, the safety car returned to the pits and the fight resumed. Evans immediately tried to attack Cassidy – it was felt that he could go faster than Nick, but he skillfully used all the features of the street track, trying not to miss the opponent.
However, a few laps from the finish, the safety electric car took off again – this time after Nico Muller’s accident, which collided with Sam Bird’s Jaguar. The end of the race was approaching so the race ended behind a safety car and Evans lost his chance to win in Monaco where he had been on the podium the previous two seasons.
Victory did not go to him this time either, as Nick Cassidy climbed to the top of the podium for the second race in a row, allowing the Envision Racing driver to take the lead in the individual standings. These two representatives of New Zealand motorsport – Cassidy and Evans – are already claiming their fourth win in a row and are naturally among the main contenders for the title. Will they be able to develop success, we will find out during the double leg of the season, which will be held in Jakarta on June 3 and 4.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
