The first race of the American Formula E weekend was very bright, and its unexpected ending pleased some fans, upset others, and all this promised that Sunday would be interesting.
But even before the start of the second race, there were events at Portland Speedway that deserved attention. Jamie Chadwick got behind the wheel of the third-generation electric race car (GEN3). The three-time women’s W Series champion is competing in the American Indy NXT series for the second season with men and recently took her first victory.
And the British racer in an electric Porsche Taycan gave Michael Andretti, the owner of the Andretti Global team, whose car she drives in the overseas youth series, a breeze around the track. They say this has made a strong impression on the former IndyCar and Formula 1 driver, and now one of the most successful businessmen in motorsports.
“It was a very interesting experience driving the GEN3 electric car,” said Jamie. “It was great to feel the power of the battery-powered power plant, but driving the Porsche Taycan was also very interesting because Michael knows this circuit better than anyone.”
On Sunday, Jean-Eric Vergne won qualifying, setting a Formula E record for the number of pole positions won: the French DS Porsche driver now has 17.
In yesterday’s race he started from a distant 18th position, but this did not stop him from reaching the podium. Commenting on today’s performance, Jean-Eric said that his result yesterday only confirms that starting from pole at this circuit doesn’t solve anything. But of course he promised that he would try to stay in the spotlight.
It must be assumed that it was no coincidence that Vergne was somewhat reserved in his predictions and did not talk about claims of victory. Behind him started very strong rivals: yesterday’s race winner Antonio Felix da Costa in a Porsche, Sam Bird, an experienced professional driving for McLaren, and Robin Frijns, a very fast Envision driver. And the nature of yesterday’s race reaffirmed that anyone can win in Portland – if you’re lucky, of course.
Individual leader Nick Cassidy, who missed out on a certain victory due to his own mistake yesterday, started the race in sixth and his main rival, Pascal Wehrlein, in seventh. Another title contender, Mitch Evans, only started eleventh.
Vergne started well, but Costa was still better and at the first corner he took the lead, but he did not particularly value this position, as on the next lap he lost it to Jake Hughes, Bird’s teammate at McLaren.
By the third lap, Wehrlein had moved up to fifth position and Vergne returned to the lead, but only because many riders in the leading group decided to activate the powerful Attack mode, which took them off the line. After this, Hughes led again for a short time, but on the 5th lap, Vergne took the lead again.
At that moment it became clear that Wehrlein’s car no longer had a front wing, but the Porsche driver, who occupied the second row of the personal classification, was in no hurry to go to the pits, but remained on the track, although he lost many positions.
In theory this was to the advantage of Cassidy, who was also well outside the top ten at this stage of the race. The replay showed Wehrlein’s wing breaking when hard contact occurred between his Porsche and Edoardo Mortara’s Mahindra.
Sebastien Buemi took the lead for a while, but was soon handed a penalty in the pit lane after his team breached some technical regulations.
With the first half of the race behind him, Sam Bird retired for a specific reason: his electric McLaren was damaged when the front wing fell underneath and off Wehrlein’s car.
At the same time, Pascal not only continued to drive, although his car had no front wing, but he already climbed to 3rd position and then to second!
On the 14th lap, deep in the peloton, a certain incident took place in accordance with the “domino effect”, when several cars driving one after the other collided, but Nick Cassidy then had to go to the pits to remove the nose cone to replace. therefore he fell again to a distant 17th position.
On the 18th of the 26 laps, da Costa was in the lead, but Frijns was ahead of him, followed by Wehrlein, Vergne was in 4th place and Evans reached 5th. And then the electric safety car drove onto the track. The reason is simple: the asphalt was abundantly littered with fragments of carbon fiber and the race management decided to put the track in order.
The restart was restarted on the 20th lap and Costa overtook Frijns almost immediately, with Evans moving into third position after overtaking several cars. Wehrlein drove quietly 4th in a Porsche without a front wing, and this was of course somewhat surprising.
On lap 24 Evans took the lead from Frijns, although it was clear that Mitch’s car also had a damaged front wing. After a lap Robin regained 2nd position, after which he tried to overtake da Costa and literally came close to him.
But Antonio added just enough on the final lap to cross the finish line first in the second race of the American weekend. This was his third victory in a row: at the end of May, the 2020 Formula E champion won the race in Shanghai, and in Portland no one else was on the top step of the podium.
Robin Frijns lost only 0.33 seconds to him and Mitch Evans took third place, which considerably strengthened his position in the individual competition: he was tied on points with Wehrlein (both have 155), but the New Zealand Jaguar driver has one more podium. Pascal finished 4th, Jean-Eric Vergne fifth.
After today’s victory Da Costa moved up to 4th in the championship, having now taken four wins, but at the start of the season he was unlucky, because if this had not been the case Antonio could now easily be the championship leader.
However, it will be all the more interesting to follow the events of the London season finale, which will be held in London from July 20 to 21.
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.