Portland’s maiden appearance on the Formula E schedule provided a race that was anything but conventional, even if there was some regularity to the result as two of this year’s title protagonists fought for the win.
But the oddities weren’t just limited to the most intense version yet of the peloton-style racing the Gen3 era has produced – with a record Formula E punishment handed out pre-race and one manufacturer (and its customer) suffering a severe slump once the E-Prix got going.
With all that in mind, who can reflect on a successful weekend and who is already looking ahead to the next round to put things right? Here are our Portland winners and losers:
Winners
Envision Racing
While Nick Cassidy was the obvious winner – and the biggest one at that – at Portland, an almost unnoticed drive to fifth from Sebastien Buemi gave Envision its biggest combined score of the season and inched it closer to Porsche in the teams’ standings.
Last week, The Race asked whether Envision could sustain its excellent season so far. At Portland it emphatically answered that to the affirmative.
Cassidy’s victory was perhaps his best so far. A canny game of cat and mouse, which at times looked and felt farcical, eventually blossomed into a race ostensibly between Cassidy, Jake Dennis and Antonio Felix da Costa.
And Cassidy again was able to bolt at just the right time and make the final move on da Costa with four laps remaining, which cemented a brilliant tactical victory, making him the first driver to claim three wins in 2023.
But it didn’t come easy. The Envision team and Cassidy struggled to find a decent set-up in practice. After winning races from eighth and ninth on the grid previously this season, could he do it from 10th?
Yes he could. In his own words “it played out more or less as expected, but to be honest we just weren’t actually great on balance, it was probably one of the most difficult races on power balance we had”.
He added: “Antonio looked like he was struggling a little bit also, Jake looked next level compared to us and so to do something special or different to overcome the balance deficit wasn’t easy.”
Jake Dennis
Dennis alluded to some extra pressure being felt on the team’s home turf on Saturday and, with team owner Michael Andretti also in town, last year’s relatively poor performance in New York City felt as though it couldn’t be repeated.
It wasn’t. Dennis delivered an excellent first pole position of the season and a fourth runner-up finish in five races. The 21-point haul harnessed a return to the top of the points standings for the first time since his win in Mexico City at the start of the season.
Counterintuitively, Dennis hated leading the first four laps and by the time of the first safety car he was “already 1% down on Antonio” and thinking: “I’ve got a long day ahead of me now.”
Where Dennis gained back that lost energy was over several laps he spent involved in what he called some “risky towing” in part of a pack he described as being “just mental back there”.
He got a bit of bad luck as the safety car came out for a second time just as he’d taken his second attack mode, and at one stage he was down in sixth position drafting Da Costa’s similar Porsche 99X Electric.
At that point Dennis acknowledged he “had a lot of work to do to get back through”.
“But we got it done, and just about got Antonio at the end,” he said.
“We just need to try to refine everything within the team; when to lead, when not to lead, I think that’s something Envision has got a really good grasp on right now, better than us.
“We just need to try and fine-tune some things. Ultimately, I don’t think it’ll make too much difference in Rome and London, where it’s going to be very qualifying-heavy and a lot more difficult to overtake, so probably a bit more conventional Formula E racing.”
Antonio Felix da Costa
Da Costa was slightly disappointed not to have been able to grab a second 2023 win as at one stage he appeared to be in the box seat.
He and his side of the Porsche garage appeared to have executed a the race well but ultimately he bolted for the line a little too soon.
Da Costa said the race was one “ for us to go back and review, we did put a lot of energy on trying to understand how these races are won”.
“And we’re getting closer,” he said.
“Berlin we had a couple of good ones, Sao Paulo as well, but ultimately I think these guys still were a little bit cleverer, they planned it, even started better than us, and I struggled a bit with energy at the end.”
Da Costa acknowledged that he was “a little bit aggressive fighting them, obviously these guys have the championship to think about, I don’t, I had that luxury to be a little bit more aggressive and try stuff a little bit harder”.
“We weren’t flashy fast this weekend ever so to come, to go away with a podium, it’s a positive as well,” he added.
Mitch Evans
Mitch Evans’s drive from 20th to fourth place was excellent but it didn’t come easy; he struggled with balance issues and had to contend with fighting back from a crippling battery issue after second practice.
But he pulled it off and, as he told The Race, “P4 is still good”.
“There are obviously a lot of guys that didn’t finish, so to come away relatively in one piece and 13 points I’ll take that,” he said.
The fact remains though that Evans is now 32 points off leader Dennis. While that is far from insurmountable with 116 points still to play for, Evans will likely have to channel his 2022 Rome wonder drives to stand any chance of scooping that so far elusive first Formula E title.
Lucas di Grassi
While Lucas di Grassi was delighted to have scored his first points since the ‘Miracle of Mexico’ podium, there was also a side to him that felt he could have bagged more than the six he earned for seventh place.
“I had a lot of energy actually in this race, I could have finished even [further] up front,” the Brazilian told The Race.
“I did maybe one or two wrong tactical moves during the race and then I got boxed in.
“You don’t want to crash the car, you don’t want to damage the car, so I lost three, maybe four positions in those two moments that really compromised the race but I managed to catch back up.”
Di Grassi was running eighth but fell back to 13th during that slight dip, however he used his experience positively to make up ground again.
Mahindra appears to have made some strides in powertrain efficiency, perhaps the result of a test it completed between Monaco and Jakarta last month.
Di Grassi admitted this season has been “very tough, but we’re improving the car”.
“The good thing is that in a very energy-efficient race we manage to step up and be there fighting in equal terms to everybody,” he said.
“We’re not there yet, we need to find a little bit of quali pace, understand the tyres, improve the system of the car, the software, and also some mechanical parts.
“I know where we need to find these two, three, four tenths that are missing in qualifying and then in the race it will come as well as an improvement and then we will be there. I think we can have a more competitive car as we progress.”
Losers
DS Penske
The seemingly senseless risk from DS Penske of using tyre scanning equipment to get a glimpse into what its rivals were doing on tyre selection, and perhaps a bit more, baffled most in the paddock.
Why risk introducing something that the team must have known would pique the interest of the FIA at some stage? It did, and to the horror of the Franco-American team the governing body penalised it.
Paddock opinion was harsh as many argued DS had not be penalised strongly enough. The FIA could have thrown the book at it, if as some suspected the RFID device was being used for other means.
The FIA’s wording – which pointed out the device was used to “collect live data from all cars”, with that data originally said to be “concerning the tyres fitted by scanning the bar codes” before that sentence was removed in an amended version of the penalty notice – was curious and only fanned the flames of accusations from rivals.
While live data capture on other aspects seems unlikely it meant both Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne started from the pitlane. If this was to happen anywhere then Portland was the best place for it, and Vergne especially made serious progress to run an astounding second at one stage.
It all came to an end though when he acquired grass and soil in his radiators after trying to avoid a major shunt with Edoardo Mortara’s Maserati. This affected his energy consumption and he dropped dispiritedly to 12th position.
Vandoorne, who came home a low-key 13th, will get his original and now repaired chassis back in Rome, damaged in the Dan Ticktum-led shunt at Berlin. He will hope that this will enable him to finish off a poor title defence with at least some cheer in Rome and London, two tracks he generally excelled at in the past.
Nissan-powered cars
Consistently inconsistent adequately describes another fitful performance from both Nissan and McLaren, this time at Portland.
How does a manufacturer go from entering the first corner second, third, fourth and fifth to scoring just two points 32 laps later?
Both teams had superb pace over a single lap in practice and qualifying, especially Sacha Fenestraz – who again shone with scintillating laps just on the right side of adhesion.
But translating that into race pace and hard results was simply frittered away in a bruising encounter for the Nissan-powered quartet of Jake Hughes, Rene Rast, Fenestraz and Norman Nato.
Nato and Fenestraz both had turns in the lead of the race but Fenestraz contrived to hit his team-mate in the Turn1/2 complex when the concertina effect caught him out. This forced him to pit for a new nose and although the second safety car helped him out, he suffered further damage in a melee with Rast in more intra-Nissan scrapping.
Nato got shuffled out of the top runners and although he made some strong moves in the second half of the race he could do no better than ninth position.
“We are still investigating because in two laps we lost nearly eight positions for a torque issue. We still don’t know what happened,” Nato told The Race. “We just had no power at some exits of the corner and got overtaken.”
Nato decided to go for the lead to “protect myself, as I saw that everything behind was going crazy. So, I spent a bit more energy but at least tried to stay in a good place and not fight so much”.
McLaren faded badly in the race after both Rast and Hughes had shown excellent one-lap pace in qualifying.
Rast suffered multiple hits and faded fast to an eventual 14th, while Hughes also got shuffled out of contention and then over-consumed energy in the final stages after a suspected technical issue.
Edoardo Mortara
Just when Edoardo Mortara desperately needed a result – any result – and just as he appeared to be in prime position to finally deliver that, he suffered a puncture that ended his race. That it came via his own team-mate Maximilian Guenther at Turn 10 with just three laps remaining made it all the more galling.
Mortara had driven a fine race until that point and, although the clearly unintentional contact via the front of Guenther’s Maserati ended the quest for a possible fourth or fifth position, the fact that last year’s title protagonist has just 17 points to show for his efforts has to be demoralising.
“Unfortunately, Max made contact with Edo’s right-rear tyre to cause a puncture during the final laps – a small mistake with points implications,” James Rossiter said after the race.
While Guenther brought home more points for Maserati, this time it was laced with something of a bitter aftertaste for the team.
Sam Bird
If Mortara could be forgiven for thinking the gods are against him this season in Formula E, Sam Bird can’t catch a break at all.
He looked set for a crack at the podium but a series of progress-sapping skirmishes were ultimately his undoing.
Bird had built a strong race, rising from 15th to fourth and he looked set to challenge for his first podium since Berlin. But despite taking the chequered flag in seventh position, he was penalised for a collision the FIA felt he triggered with Guenther’s Maserati.
Bird’s radio exchange
Sam Bird: Tell him to go, man. Either I’m going or he’s going. Come on. Phil Ingram: Yeah, go forward with Mitch. Look after him. SB: I’ve got more pace than him!
SB: Because I was defending from Mitch I get done by Seb. Thanks guys!
That meant a fifth consecutive no-score and more despondency for a driver who’s had more than his fair share of misfortune this season.
There was feist in his drive, especially when he felt his team had dithered in orchestrating his positioning with team-mate Evans. This was reflected in some lively radio between him and his engineer Phil Ingham.
Keyword: Winners and losers from Portland’s bizarre Formula E debut