A record-breaking number of lead changes, a front row lockout that nobody predicted and a bizarre pre-race protest made Formula E’s Berlin double-header one of the championship’s most memorable weekends.
And it’s clear that some drivers and teams walked away far happier with the results than others…
WINNERS
Nick Cassidy
From a dependability point of view Nick Cassidy has been both the standard and the revelation of the season so far.
An occasional stellar performer in his first two seasons with Envision, he’s now seemingly cracked the ultimate code of Formula E: consistency.
Three months ago, that looked highly unlikely as Jaguar and as a result its customer Envision looked out of sorts with its powertrain which on more than one occasion caused issues for its quartet of drivers.
Cassidy and new team-mate Sebastien Buemi barely had any running worth its name as they took to the track at Mexico City in January, but very quickly they all hit their strides. Cassidy actually took a little longer than most but by Hyderabad, he was a genuine contender for the win.
Fast forward to four races beyond that point and he’s four points off the lead of the championship after a succession of strong results: second, third, second, fifth and his win yesterday.
There were bumps along the way, including Cassidy’s inexplicable rant at team-mate Buemi for some perceived blocking in free practice three. While this was plainly disproportionate, although extremely funny, it didn’t unsettle him. Nor did his error in deploying his 350kW power mode too late and denying him a crack at pole.
That says a lot about Cassidy’s focus and mentality which at present is looking steelier than ever.
Mitch Evans
Back-to-back wins for Evans.
Like its customer team Envision, Jaguar finally licked a Berlin wound and took a first-ever victory at Tempelhof after 16 attempts!
It again was just the class of the field in terms of the set-up dynamic and energy usage. That’s all Evans needed because the Kiwi can simply boss the rest in terms of racecraft.
He ruthlessly dealt with all rivals on Saturday, breaking free at just the right time and making his car’s body language aggressive enough to again fill team-mate Sam Bird’s mind with just enough doubt about any glory move in the closing stages.
Evans’ Sunday was forged with a little more caution but it paid dividends. A solid fifth on the grid and a fourth place finish – while not sending Evans wild with excitement – was, in the context of the chaos of the day, a very worthwhile haul of points and ensures he now sits a highly threatening fifth in the standings and within a one-race points haul striking distance of leader Pascal Wehrlein.
Maximilian Guenther
If Guenther’s performance on Saturday deserved plaudits, his run from 21st to sixth on Sunday has to go down as one of the very best of the season.
For its sheer poise, it silenced those that tag the German with the inconsistent moniker too often.
There is no doubt whatsoever that both Guenther and Maserati MSG team-mate Edoardo Mortara were under a great deal of pressure heading into Berlin. They both needed big results and big performances. Only one of them achieved both and that was Guenther.
What was probably most impressive was his combination of typical aggression with reading the race. He ducked out of some confrontations for the greater good of his result. There is a big question mark as to whether or not Guenther would have had that foresight just a few races ago.
Maserati MSG was yearning for points, any points, last weekend and Guenther delivered them. To do it on Sunday from the last row of the grid and in a manner in which at one stage he looked like he might be on to reprise his previous day’s podium was astounding.
“The most important thing is that this is a great place for us to build some momentum from,” Maserati MSG team principal James Rossiter told The Race.
“We don’t want to be going out now and setting targets of winning races, we still need to keep the same target of just having clean races where we get points and bring them home.”
“On the days where we’re quick we’re going to be at the front and on the days where we’re OK we’re going to bring home some points. That’s what we need to achieve for the next few races.”
Abt Cupra
This was no revelatory breakthrough weekend for Abt Cupra, which had been through a rotten first half of its comeback season.
But what it was, was a much-needed placebo treatment so it can at least make some progress up the competitive order in the second half.
A test at Calafat in Spain the week before the race certainly helped. As did the spectacular performance of its drivers Robin Frijns and Nico Mueller when the rain on Sunday morning opened up the most unlikely opportunity for them to take a sensational front-row lock-out.
Even before the wet conditions there were promising signs, especially with Mueller’s Saturday showing when he was quicker than both factory Mahindra drivers in qualifying.
The way Frijns and Mueller exploited their advantage, which was mainly due to the pair’s natural flair and slight devil-may-care and nothing to lose attitude, was as breathtaking as it was audacious.
What it cemented was some much-needed morale and belief for Abt at its home race. After the front-row domination and two points for Mueller, and with further Mahindra testing and development, there is at least a small window of light now that it can follow.
“After these months of hard work and pretty dark months, still the team stuck together perfectly, everybody was working hard, was motivated, had an awesome team spirit,” Mueller told The Race.
“That’s not a given in such tough times. To kind of repay their effort and seeing their eyes and the smiles when the cars were rolled back into the garage after qualifying and securing a front row lock-out, that was special.
“I rarely get goosebumps in the car, to be honest, but today I did and that was pretty cool.”
LOSERS
Nissan-powered cars
Both Nissan and customer McLaren were on the back foot from the very first lap of free practice on Friday evening and it showed from that point on.
It just looked like all four cars could not cope with the surface to get the tyres in the right window and no matter what the respective teams chose to do it never worked.
This was one of the worst showings by a single manufacturer over any given weekend so far this season, and at no stage did any of the quartet look like scoring points. Every other team did of course, and for Nissan and McLaren there will need to be some soul searching before Monaco in two weeks’ time.
Rene Rast’s issue in free practice on Sunday morning was merely salt in the wounds. Effectively, Rast’s car was afflicted by what McLaren team boss Ian James described as “the energy not being reset over the FIA line when we went across the pitexit”.
This constituted a powertrain change and Rast never recovered after losing an entire session before the wet qualifying period.
“We need to ensure that the rate of development is accelerated because we’re being left behind,” was James’ honest assessment.
“Yes there are track-specific reasons for it but I wouldn’t say that’s the be all and end all, so if we’re going to improve moving forwards we need to find some solutions.”
Development upgrades that were scheduled for Berlin were not in evidence last weekend and it told, although James confirmed to The Race that he was “expecting some updates to come in the future, in the not too distant future at that. Hopefully that will start moving things in the right direction”.
“Unfortunately we weren’t able to bring all the upgrades planned for this event and that’s what we think made a major difference compared to other teams,” said Nissan FE chief Tommaso Volpe.
“In both races, our strategy was good and the drivers performed well, which makes our lack of pace even more frustrating.
“We’ve got a lot to analyse and learn, and hopefully in Monaco we will come back stronger and set a positive trend.”
Jake Hughes, Norman Nato and Sacha Fenestraz were largely anonymous throughout the races, suffering from a crippling lack of traction.
“I’m not concerned that there’s no glimmer of hope there,” added a determined James.
“I think that if we can unlock the right solutions and find the performance we can start getting back in contention again, but we need to do that.
“The fact is that the competition is moving ahead and we’re getting left behind at the moment.”
Porsche
Yet again Wehrlein was able to score points and retain his early season points lead. Yet there will be some concern soon that the middling nature of those results won’t be good enough to stay there too long.
Porsche’s poor qualifying on Saturday ultimately undid it in terms of fighting for victories, which it was again capable of at Berlin. The group stages of the qualifying sessions and extracting the last few tenths of a second, sometimes hundredths of a second, remains Porsche’s Achilles Heel.
Wehrlein, in a new Porsche 99X Electric chassis after a crack was found in his previous one, fought back to a solid sixth on Saturday and then followed it up with a similar seventh a day later. Team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa meanwhile got wiped out by an over-exuberant Jake Dennis on Saturday and then claimed a disappointing fifth 24 hours later.
Both his and Wehrlein’s second race appeared a little confused as they attempted to race together. At times it got tetchy.
Da Costa especially assisted Wehrlein in the race but when it was time to try to check out there was a crucial hesitation and it cost both of them.
“Hey, guys I need to go now because everyone is going to go as I’ve done a lot for him [Wehrlein] already today,” da Costa told his engineer Marius Meier-Diedrich at one stage.
After the race da Costa hinted to The Race that both he and the team stuttered too much once they got to the front of the field.
“To progress together, we did that – we brought both cars to be one and two,” he said.
“We did that very well. But for us it’s then ‘what do we do now’?
“That’s where we have to re-analyse the race and learn from what we could have done a little bit better.
“We don’t get it right all the time, and I put myself in that same vibe. I should have known when to go and I also reacted too late.”
To Porsche it will likely seem harsh to label a loser’s tag upon it when it scored points in both races. But the facts remain that its direct title-challenging opposition Jaguar, Envision, DS Penske and customer team Avalanche Andretti all outscored the works Porsche team on its home patch.
Mahindra
In the context of what Abt Cupra achieved in Berlin, its manufacturer provider went missing again with another limp performance.
A solitary point after a fighting drive by Oliver Rowland on Saturday was the only cause for joy. Mahindra slipped to eighth in the teams’ standings (and being that high is mostly courtesy of Lucas di Grassi’s Mexican miracle). It is now within striking distance for the over-achieving NIO 333 team and the underachieving Nissan.
Di Grassi put in typically combative performances on both days. But an 11th and 12th place finish was the maximum he could achieve in a car that just didn’t have the balance or efficiency to even match Rowland’s meagre result.
Overall, it was a further abject performance from a team that looks and feels like it needs some kind of refurbishment right now because it feels like it’s still in a crippling hangover from its Cape Town debacle.
Word is that team boss Frederic Bertrand came back from a recent visit to Mahindra headquarters in India with a commitment to provide more resources for his squad to recover in the near future. That time can’t come soon enough.
Keyword: Winners and losers from Formula E’s Berlin weekend