Written by Katie Jeromson
A super charged Saturday kicked off with the Jaguars leading the cars out to their 30 minute practice session. The conditions were much cooler than yesterday and so more track changes for the drivers to get accustomed to. The inside sections of the track are described as sandpaper, compared to the cold smoother outside portions.
As the session got going it didn’t take long for us to hear about traffic, London being such a tight track, sometimes the drivers just had nowhere to go for a few corners.
It is so essential that each driver’s engineer is keeping them aware of traffic, essentially some corners are blind for the drivers. Much like yesterday, we had drivers trying to build a gap to those in front, Jehan Daruvala in the Maserati managing to get the black and white flag for driving too slowly.
Along with the traffic and surface changes, the drivers had to battle with keeping the tyres in the window, some drivers opting for more than one warm up or cool down lap to keep that under control.
Ollie Rowland took a spin in turn 19, locking up from pushing too hard and losing control just where the track surface changes, luckily he escaped a trip into the barriers. Pascal Wehrlein’s left rear did have a brush with the wall, but escaped without damage also.
At different times, all three of the top championship contenders found themselves at the top of the timings. However, with ten minutes to go, Mitch Evans put in a flying lap, his race engineer claiming in on the radio to be “pretty f*****g awesome.”
Not to be overlooked though, the rest of the field started to set personal bests and it was Robin Frijns who finished the session at the top of the time sheets. The Envision racing driver set a time of 1:10.544, with Oliver Rowland 0.118 second behind, closely followed by Sebastien Buemi another 0.017 adrift.
As qualifying got underway the British weather lived up to its name, light rain began, affecting the outdoor portion of the track. This ended as quickly as it started, but it meant that the group A drivers had a constantly changing track and so the leader board was ever changing.
Jake Hughes for Neom McLaren tapped the wall and sustained wheel damage, so unfortunately didn’t finish the session. But the big shock came at the end of the session, when championship leader Nick Cassidy didn’t make it through to the duels.
His penultimate flying lap was only good enough for fourth, but as those around him set personal bests, another lap was required. Unsurprisingly there was an unhappy Cassidy at the end of the session, when he found out he was down to 9th.
What could be a huge blow to his championship bid, was thought to be caused by overheated tyres. Where Jaguar went for one cool down lap followed by two flying laps, others around went for two cool laps and put it all on the line with a push lap at the end.
Through to the duels from Group A we had: Pascal Wehrlein, Sebastian Buemi, Oliver Rowland and Robin Frijns. Meaning the reigning world champion Jake Dennis also missed out.
Group B benefited from a much drier track and the pressure was on for Mitch Evans to make it through the heats for Jaguar TCS Racing, but also for those three important pole position points.
Evans did comfortably make it through the groups though, alongside Nico Muller, Norman Nato and Jean-Eric Vergne. Tag Heuer Porsche driver Antonio Felix Da Costa, struggled to put together a lap and found himself ousted at the group stage, meaning each of the top two teams were down to one car in the heats.
In the first round of duels, Buemi was victorious over Rowland, with a 0.208 second margin. It was much closer for Wehrlein, who bested Robin Frijns by just 0.039 seconds. Then from group B, Norman Nato was victorious over Nico Muller by 0.083 seconds.
With the final duel at this stage being stormed by Mitch Evans, who beat Vergne by a commanding 0.369 seconds, flying over the bumps of this London track.
On to the semi finals, where it was Buemi vs Wehrlein lining up for the first duel. 76% of the fans were predicting a win for Wehrlein, but Buemi was geared up to rain on their parade with a sensational lap.
He knocked out the championship contender with a whopping margin of 0.425 seconds and delivered a blow to Wehrlein’s championship contention. Making this the first time Buemi has reached the final since Mexico City.
To add insult to injury, Evans bested Nato in his semi final, although Evans lap this time was nothing to write home about, he won with a 0.184 seconds margin. Meaning that both the finalists due to go head to head were in Jaguar powered cars that had beaten Porsche powered competitors.
Coming into the final duel, the Formula E fans predicted Mitch Evans to take pole, with 75% of them voting in favour of the Kiwi driver. Hard fought with Buemi getting the best of the first sector, it was Evans that aced the next two and ultimately took pole position. Evans now closing up to be just nine points away from his team mate and in the best possible position for the race.
When the smoke cleared from the pre-start burnouts it was a clean start, Evans got a fantastic launch off the line and held Buemi at bay. Behind Nato got stuck into a battle with Wehrlein straight away, with Nato passing the Porsche driver.
However the race was quickly brought to a pause in the form of a safety car, as Robin Frijns and Jake Dennis tangled. It resulted with Frijns in the barrier, unable to continue and as he moved across the track Sam Bird was left with nowhere to go also picking up damage. Frijns was unable to continue and it is understood receiving medical attention for his arm or hand. Dennis received a 10 second time penalty from the stewards for causing the collision.
Evans controlled the restart, keeping the pace slower trying to save energy for a later attack. Whilst team mate Cassidy was getting bogged down at the other end of the pack, he missed the attack zone and lost time to those around him for his trouble.
Jake Dennis then found himself entangled once again, making contact with Vergne to pick up another penalty, five seconds this time round. In the blink of an eye, there was contact elsewhere with Oliver Rowland coming into the side of Antonio Felix Da Costa.
Whilst Rowland did pick up a five-second time penalty and wing damage, the bigger blow was to Porsche as Da Costa’s race was over with the steering broken on his car.
Whilst this was going on, Buemi set on the charge and sailed past Evans on the start/finish straight, to take the lead of the race. Buemi then tried to build a lead and take an attack more, but it wasn’t quite enough, with Evans snatching back the lead.
The Kiwi then looked to do something similar, but once again the gap wasn’t quite enough and Buemi was back in front.
Further back, Dennis had something to prove and was adopting an aggressive driving style, in order to do some damage limitation. However in the process, he made contact with Cassidy and the stewards felt the need to give the black and white flag for driving standards with another five second time penalty.
That wasn’t the only shunt Cassidy felt whilst trying to recover the day, Stoffel Vandoorne tapped the side of him, causing contact with the wall.
Suddenly Buemi found himself behind both Evans and Wehrlein, but the Porsche driver wasn’t stopping there as he took Evans in to turn one. Evans tried to stay with him as much as possible but was slightly down on energy.
Wehrlein took his first attack and retained the lead, pushing hard for the gap to build up between them. Evans taking his second attack mode in response didn’t make much of a dent, plus Wehrlein was able to take his second helping of attack mode and still hold onto that lead. A move that earned him many a table slap in the Porsche garage.
Evans was then under threat from Max Guenther, who had more energy and picked Evans off easily, looking like a big blow to the Jaguar team.
As the race begun to get to the sharp end and the drivers became more desperate for points, we had another round of bumps and shunts. Sasha Fenestraz sent Nato into the barriers, picking up a five second penalty and due to the amount of debris that had collected a safety car was needed to clean things up.
Wehrlein got a great jump on the restart but the pack immediately had to slow down as Guenther experienced a technical failure, coming to a standstill on the track. The car was recoverable under double waved yellows though and racing resumed quickly, just in time for Vergne to pick up a five second time penalty for making contact with Jehan Daruvala.
But it was Pascal Wehrlein that crossed the all important finish line first, and stormed up the rankings to take over the lead of the championship. Mitch Evans came home in second along with the fastest lap and sits just three points behind in the championship. Then Sebastien Buemi came home in third, celebrating with his children in the post race interviews.
So what of Nick Cassidy? With the time penalties for others applied, Cassidy managed a very respectable seventh, meaning that although he drops to third in the standings, he is just seven points off the lead.
Today had the potential to wrap things up for all three championships, instead it has only become closer, with even more on the line for tomorrow.
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