Formula E: Mitch Evans wins Saturday’s race in Shanghai

Formula E does not feel completely comfortable on stationary circuits and this weekend the double round of the World Electric Car Racing Championship will take place in Shanghai, on a well-known Chinese Grand Prix circuit.

Of course, Formula E uses a shorter configuration with a lap length of 3051 m, which has 12 corners, but it remains a stationary circuit, which is not well suited to narrow wheelbase electric cars.

During qualifying, Jean-Eric Vergne, an experienced DS Penske driver, was able to cope best with these conditions, which also included high temperatures of almost 30 degrees and high humidity. It was he, two-time Formula E champion, who won pole position and defeated Oliver Rowland, who plays for the Nissan factory team, in the final.

After qualifying, Vergne admitted that it was not easy for him, because these electric racing cars were originally created for narrow and winding city circuits, and on the wide Shanghai ring road with its long curves they behave very unstable, especially since they have relatively little downforce to develop. , and Almost ordinary rubber, which is used in Formula E, cannot provide sufficient grip.

“The circuit is not completely unknown to me, because I have raced here more than once in Formula 1,” recalls the pole holder. – The first and second sectors generally remained exactly the same. I want to say that driving a Formula E car here is very different from Formula 1, and we are having a very difficult time. There’s clearly not enough coupling. The corners are very long, so when you go through them you are constantly fighting understeer, then oversteer, then understeer again, and it feels like you are not going through one corner, but five in a row!” However, Vergne was satisfied with his work. This was his 16th pole position in Formula E and his second this season.

Jean-Eric therefore started from the most favorable position: next to his electric car on the first row was Oliver Rowland’s Nissan, but from the second row were such strong rivals as Mitch Evans, the Jaguar driver, and Pascal Wehrlein, the Porsche driver, started the race on Saturday.

At the start, Vergne retained the lead, but Rowland missed both Wehrlein and Evans and fell to 4th position. Wehrlein’s teammate Antonio Felix da Costa finished fifth and he also managed to stay ahead of Rowland and then Evans on the second lap.

Already on the third lap many drivers activated the increased power mode, in the group of leaders Wehrlein was the first to do so and he managed to stay ahead of Vergne, and at one point Robin Frijns, the Envision driver who started ninth. took the first position, but he did not hold it long.

After five laps, Wehrlein was in the lead, his teammate was second, Frijns was in third place, but then Vergne also used Attack Mode, which could very well change the order in the leading group.

When attack mode was reactivated by Pascal Wehrlein, da Costa took the lead, and when he stepped off the main track to use this mode, Evans led the race. But on the 8th lap Vergne returned to the lead, who was already on the podium this year, but had not yet won, so he naturally wanted to distinguish himself today.

But on the 10th of 29 laps he decided to activate Attack Mode, and because the fight in the group of leaders was so fierce and the intervals between the cars were minimal, he found himself in 6th position in this situation.

Wehrlein started the 12th lap in the lead, Evans was running second, but with the high power mode engaged, so by the 13th lap Mitch was leading the race. Vergne partially recovered and completed the top three, but the end of the race was still far away and the participants had not yet dealt all their cards, if we talk about tactical ideas.

For example, Evans gave the lead to Wehrlein without a fight on the 15th lap and then Da Costa was ahead of the New Zealand Jaguar driver, but this did not mean that Mitch gave up the battle for victory.

On the 17th lap, Edoardo Mortara, a Mahindra driver, retired from the race – his car was damaged after hard contact with Max Gunther’s Maserari. At the same time, the German continued to fight in the top ten.

Meanwhile, there were still ten laps to go before the finish, Wehrlein remained in the lead, Evans was second, but Da Costa actively pressured him and overtook him in the 10th corner, but Mitch immediately recovered. His Jaguar batteries had more energy than their rivals, and this should have played a role in the final stage of the race.

On the 23rd lap, Frijns found himself off the track, having lost many positions, but it was unclear whether he made a mistake or someone “helped” him.

Five laps before the finish, Evans improved again to take the lead, and he had a 20% battery charge and Wehrlein had 2% less. By then, Jake Dennis, the Andretti driver and current world champion, had moved up to third position.

But on the next lap Wehrlein took decisive action and attacked Evans, and there was contact between the cars, but Pascal managed to push his way to the front, although he actually slid along the side of the road.

Evans did not like this and he tried to win back – the duel lasted several turns, but the German still retained the lead. But on the last lap Mitch used all his energy resources, as well as all his remarkable skills, and in a fair fight he took the first position thanks to an excellent overtaking action on the outside radius of Turn 1!

His teammate Nick Cassidy also improved and battled with Wehrlein until the last corner for 2nd place, but Pascal still remained in front. Victory ultimately went to Mitch for the second time this year, Wehrlein finished second and they were joined on the podium by Cassidy, Evans’ teammate and compatriot.

Still, it cannot be said that Nick was happy with the third result: on the radio he called Wehrlein’s fighting methods on the track “dirty”, and the Jaguar team promised their driver that they would draw the attention of the stewards to this. And he was dissatisfied with the fact that Pascal actually pushed him off the track in the last corner of the last lap, there was contact between the cars and the Jaguar’s front wing was damaged. He also believed he had a better chance of winning than his teammate, but Jaguar asked him not to attack Evans.

However, they reached the podium in this order: Evans – Wehrlein – Cassidy. Immediately after the finish, however, it was revealed that the stewards were investigating an incident between Mitch and Pascal, who believed Evans had forced him off the track on the 26th lap. In Formula E it often happens that race results are revised, so let’s wait for the stewards’ verdict.

Jean-Vergne, who started from pole, only finished seventh: during the race he had contact with Oliver Rowland and his car suffered some damage, which affected his speed.

Heading into tomorrow’s race in Shanghai, Cassidy remains the season’s leader, with Wehrlein second in the individual standings, Rowland third and Evans fourth. At the same time, Jaguar is confidently in the lead in the team standings after eleven races.