São Paulo Formula E Notebook – Post Race

• Nick Cassidy’s retirement, after crashing on his own front-wing during yesterday’s Sao Paulo EPrix, was only his second stoppage in the last 21 Formula E races for the Kiwi.
• The Jaguar TCS Racing driver saw his 19 point lead in the standings reduced to just four after Pascal Wehrlein scooped 12 points for fourth place, adding to the three he collected for his second pole position of the 2024 season.
• The NEOM McLaren squad celebrated its first ever win in its present guise, but it was also the first victory for the former Mercedes EQ operation since it metamorphosed in to its present structure – the Berlin EPrix in May 2022 when Nyck de Vries triumphed.
• 980 days covered the period from Sam Bird’s last EPrix win at the New York City EPrix in July 2021 to his brilliant Sao Paulo success. The NEOM McLaren driver’s victory ensured that he became only the second Formula E driver to win with three different teams. The first was Antonio Felix da Costa who won for BMW Andretti, DS Techeetah and Porsche.
• Nissan’s Oliver Rowland celebrated his second podium in as many races after a fighting to drive to third place from 11^th on the starting grid. The British driver said that he ultimately didn’t “think the safety cars made too much difference to our actual targets today.
• “It was pretty tough from being in the middle of the pack but what’s quite tricky here is when you have a battery temp issue, you can’t save too much in the beginning of the race because then if you have too much energy at the end that completely screws your battery because you can’t use it,” added Rowland.
• “So, it’s a really tricky balance for us to have the right targets but not have saved too much. I think it was the first time in Gen3 that we’ve had this overheating of the battery and I think it’s new for everybody..”
• Edoardo Mortara’s promising performance in qualifying, which saw him start sixth, despite having lost some track time with a front driveshaft breakage in FP2, was stymied when he had an incident with former Mahindra driver Lucas di Grassi.
• Mortara suffered damage in the incident which also saw him lose momentum as he stopped in the run-off area as per the regulations before re-joining the circuit.
• Team boss Frederic Bertrand said after the race that “the dominant feeling is frustration, because we definitely deserved to score points this weekend.
• “That aside, I’m happy we have been able to deliver a proper qualifying, which was the target for the weekend. It’s good to get the feeling of participating in the Duels for the first time in a long time.”
• Norman Nato’s miserable Sao Paulo EPrix was compounded by getting a 5-second penalty for hitting Lucas di Grassi at the first turn. Nato started a lowly 18^th on the grid after misinterpreting information on his dash that meant he missed getting a second qualifying run.
• ERT’s Dan Ticktum finished in a dejected 17^th position but did take something from the week in Brazil, saying that “I think strategy-wise we did quite a good job, we just got a bit screwed over on the lap just as I started to push, as I was then crashed into and pushed wide and lost a couple of places – and then a McLaren and two Mahindra’s went off in front, and without that contact I’d have been about five or six places higher up, so the timing just didn’t work out.” 
• Ticktum’s teammate Sergio Sette Camara was disqualified from his home race after being deemed to have breached Article 7.5 of the Technical
• Regulations which dictates using the prescribed energy. He was proved to have gone slightly over the maximum of 38.5 kWh useable energy allowance.
• Abt Cupra’s Nico Mueller saw his race compromised with front-wing damage after contact with Oliver Rowland’s Nissan. After pitting for repairs he then picked up some debris that blocked his radiators and the team elected to retire him.
• FEN’s founder and editor Sam Smith asked former Ferrari and Williams F1 driver Felipe Massa in the Sao Paulo paddock about his upcoming attempt to overturn Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 F1 world title with a legal challenge.
• “To be honest I think everything I’m supposed to say about that I’ve said, in all the interviews. It’s something we’ll fight until the end,” said Massa.
• “This is the only thing I can say now. It doesn’t depend on me anymore; it depends on the lawyers and we have a very good group of professional people working on that. I really believe we have a big case and a big possibility to win the case.
• “But to be honest, it’s not on me anymore and the only thing I can say is that we are fighting for the justice. It was not fair what happened to me. After a race that was manipulated. And it changed many things, especially the champion.”
• Massa tried the Gen3 pool car at Sao Paulo yesterday but only managed minimal mileage before stopping on track. The ex-Venturi driver, who scored a best result of third place at Monaco in 2019, was towed back to the pits.
• Formula E Notebook (FEN) has discovered that senior executives from the Geely automotive manufacturing company will attend the Tokyo EPrix later this month.
• Geelyis known to have been considering a berth for its Lotus brand in international motorsport for some time. Lotus unveiled its all-electric Emeya hyper-GT car recently and is believed to be angling for a motorsport programme in the near future.
• FEN understands that the ongoing will they/won’t situation with regards to whether or not Sebastien Buemi, Robin Frijns, Nyck de Vries and Nico Mueller can race at the second Berlin EPrix on Sunday May 12 has been resolved via an e-vote via the FIA and the 11 teams.
• A unanimous verdict was needed for the quartet to race in Berlin, which many paddock insiders always believed to be highly unlikely. That’s because some teams view their own choice in drivers as strategic in order to avoid such difficulties as Envision, Mahindra and Abt Cupra are in with regards to their line-ups because of the clash. It means that Sebastien Buemi, Robin Frijns, Nyck de Vries and Nico Mueller will have to be replaced for both Berlin races.
• Jaguar TCS Racing team boss James Barclay told FEN that the discussions regarding the upcoming Gen4 era and, in particular, the non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs are making progress.
• “There’s a lot to get done but what is important is that we maintain the timing that we’re working to for Gen4, that’s really key, but clearly what we want to find is the cost of that is shared amongst all the stake holders, that cost shouldn’t just sit with the manufacturers,” said Barclay.
• “A lot of it is cash flow timing and making sure all of those elements work together.
• “There is progress being made, the manufacturers are working together, the FIA is willing to support that and I’m confident hopefully with everyone working together we’ll be able to come up with the right solution together. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t, but I’m sure we will.”
• The first round of the NXT Gen Cup that will support the Misano EPrixs next month should see a grid of around 20 cars according to series spokesperson Johan Meissner.
• Meissner told FEN last week that “we’re expecting about the same as last year, so around 20 cars, it’s always difficult to say which how many of them will be full season or part season. I think we had 18 drivers last season And then we had I think we were 22? Maximum last year.”
• Dutch former karting champion Lukas Stiefelhagen will step up to a full NXT Gen Cup season this year. The 16-year-old shocked the NXT Gen Cup field last year by claiming pole position and a top five finish at Knutstorp, despite never having raced at the challenging Swedish circuit before or driven the 100% electric LRT NXT1 race car.
• Several other drivers have already committed to the NXT Gen Cup including frontrunners in last year’s inaugural series Enzo Hallmann, Manz Thalin and Victor Nielsen. All cars will be run by Lestrup Racing which is owned by co-founder of the series Frederik Lestrup.
• Formula E has announced a partnership with Google Cloud technologies to help drive powerful on-and off-track performance in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.
• The collaboration will involve Formula E harnessing Google Cloud technologies ranging from scalable cloud infrastructure to data and analytics, to generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tools in the GENBETA Race Car Development Programme to accelerate the growth of the world’s first all-electric motorsport.
• Among the guests at the Sao Paulo EPrix were F1 and CART racing legend Emerson Fittipaldi (who waved the chequered flag) and ex-F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. The two are forever connected in the annals of the sport as Fittipaldi was briefly a Lotus F1 teammate to Ecclestone’s former protégé Jochen Rindt, who was killed at the 1970 Italian Grand Prix. The pair have a combined age of 170!
• NEOM McLaren’s Ian James paid tribute to Fittipaldi, telling FEN “what a great way to celebrate our first win as well with the guy that actually won and was instrumental in McLaren winning its first [F1] world championship, Emerson Fittipaldi, waving [Bird] across the line with the chequered flag. I think that was just the icing on the cake.”
• FEN will be on the ground at the inaugural Tokyo EPrix bringing you all the latest news and intrigue from the Formula E paddock!

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