Formula E Berlin, Race 9: Nick Cassidy in Jaguar TCS drives from 21st place to victory
The Saturday race was one of the wild chaotic races with several collisions. Abt Cupra brought a new driver pairing: Kelvin van der Linde, who usually races for ABT in the DTM and the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring, started alongside Lucas di Grassi. The 27-year-old South African had already participated in three Formula E races at the beginning of last season and left a strong impression; as a reserve driver, he is also part of the team this year. Unfortunately, both were involved in collisions after starting from positions seven and eleven: while di Grassi had to retire his car prematurely, van der Linde managed to finish in eleventh place after changing the nose of his race car.
Until lap 21, Cassidy was relegated from 9th to 21st place!
That meant: Safety Car! And twice at that, which Cassidy knew how to use to his advantage: Originally starting from ninth place, Cassidy found himself caught in the pack and fell back to 21st place by lap 21. The New Zealand driver launched a late comeback, skillfully navigating through two phases under Safety Car conditions while maintaining sufficient energy levels.
In lap 43, Cassidy moved to the front
The decisive moment came in lap 43 when Cassidy executed a determined maneuver, overtaking first Oliver Rowland and then Jean-Éric Vergne to take the lead. With an excess of usable energy accumulated through his strategic positioning in the pack, Cassidy surged ahead to secure a two-second lead and ultimately clinch the victory, which put him at the top of the driver standings in the FIA World Championship.
Despite fierce competition, Vergne from DS Penkse and Rowland from Nissan Formula E secured second and third places respectively. Cassidy's teammate Mitch Evans finished fourth, followed by local hero Pascal Wehrlein and teammate Antonio Felix da Costa from the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team, which pleased Porsche. Florian Modlinger, Senior Manager Porsche Formula E, stated:
"It was a very exciting first race. With positions 5 and 6, we have earned important points. However, from a results perspective, it's not what we aimed for. In the last two or three laps, we lost the fight for the win or a podium placement. That is disappointing."
Notably, Taylor Barnard claimed a tenth place and thus points on his debut in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, making him the youngest point scorer in the series. Cassidy's triumph not only solidified his lead in the championship but also propelled Jaguar TCS Racing to the top of the team standings, setting the stage for an exciting round ten at Tempelhof on Sunday, May 12th. Nick Cassidy, No. 37, Jaguar TCS Racing, remarked:
"Today I was very lucky, but sometimes you need that in Formula E. We take it as it comes. It was interesting: I started from position 9, did not have a great start, was not particularly fast, but I think we played it smart and stayed out of trouble. We have a lot of work ahead of us – we need to get faster. Let's see how it goes tomorrow. Things can change very quickly."
In the championship, Cassidy leads with 121 points ahead of Wehrlein with 112 points. In the team standings, Jaguar leads with 210 points ahead of Porsche with 146 points.
A very interesting side note, which our colleague Sebastian Henßler from Elektroauto-News discovered in his conversation with Jeff Dodds, the CEO of Formula E, concerns the energy expenditure. Dodds explained:
"To compare the energy consumption of Formula 1 to Formula E, we can complete an entire 45-minute race with the same amount of energy that a Formula 1 car needs for two laps on the Monaco circuit."
Or calculated differently: Where a Formula E racer can achieve 96.77 km, a Formula 1 car only goes 6.67 km.
And Jack Lambert, who works with Wolfspeed, commented to Henßler once more on the transfer of Formula E technology to mass production: In his view, silicon carbide technology has great potential, improving acceleration, efficiency and performance on the race track – and thus also being of interest for production models.
What does this mean?
Formula E remains more exciting than Formula 1 and is more efficient: Multiple teams and even more drivers are still competing for the World Championship here, and chaotic races like the one in Berlin on Saturday 2024 mix everything up again significantly.
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