LONDON FORMULA E NOTEBOOK – POST RACE

Nick Cassidy told Formula E Notebook that he won’t hold a grudge against his occasional golf buddy Antonio Felix da Costa after contact from the Porsche driver ended his hopes of becoming World Champion yesterday.
- “Look, I lost the championship last year from Mitch taking me out in Rome,” said the Jaguar TCS Racing driver. “I think I’m mature enough to know that these things happen in racing. It completely sucks for me. It won’t affect my relationship with him, it won’t affect my respect I have towards him. It just sucks for me.”
Upon pitting after the contact Cassidy was in animated conversation with his engineer Phil Ingram, questioning the overall strategy that had seen him fall back within range of the chasing pack in the closing stages of the race. The transcript was as follows:
- NC: What did I say? Just tell me what I told you. Tell me what I told you guys. I told you so many times. I did nothing wrong, and you put me in that position. Forget the tyre change. Go away. The suspension is broken guys, forget it. What are you doing?
- PI: Mate, we can’t risk both Porsches getting maximum points. Is it broken broken?
- NC: Yeas, it’s broken. Are you really… You’re really making me play the team game? After everything that’s happened you’re going to make me play the team game?
- PI: I don’t know what to say to you mate…
- NC: Maybe I told you so? Or an apology from someone? I did everything for this team…
Cassidy’s Jaguar teammate Mitch Evans was equally vocal about his strategy difficulties in the race, saying that he had a ‘bad feeling’ about where the calls were going when asked to assist the team on pulling a gap out before initially planned attack mode deployments.
- ME: It’s not fair guys. I’m happy to give him a gap but I’m not losing position.
- JR: Nick is 5 tenths away. 7 tenths away. 9 tenths between CASS and WEH.
- ME: You guys are going to f*** me. It’s going to be bad.
- ME: I got a bad feeling from you guys now. Give me some kind of confidence or I’m ignoring everything. You are f****** me.
- JR: We will work on getting this back.
- ME: Yeah well we’ll see.
Jaguar TCS Racing’s team title success was the first time that the ‘Big Cat’ has taken a recognised World Championship since Teo Fabi and the Silk Cut Jaguar team were crowned World Sportscar Champions in 1991.
With Pascal Wehrlein’s victory on Saturday, Porsche became the first ever team to take seven wins in a season since Formula E was formed in 2014. The previous record was shared by Renault e.dams in 2016/17.
Porsche also has the best victory strike rate within its starts in Formula E with 12 wins from 74 entries, a success rate of 16.2%
FEN understands that the Saudi Arabian rounds of the 2024-25 world championship could move from traditional venue Diriyah. Options for a location are believed to include another location in Riyadh and a modified version of the Jeddah F1 street circuit.
The first ever Formula E race in Thailand is set to be confirmed shortly with Chiang Mai in the northern part of the country in position to host a race in March 2025. Formula E has told teams that it believes it can deliver an unchanged programme from the 11 date and 16 race provisional schedule that was issued in June.
Nico Mueller ended his two year stint with Abt Cupra with a brace of sixth places in London, meaning that he collated an impressive 52-points out-scoring both NEOM McLaren drivers Sam Bird and Jake Hughes, as well as Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz.
- “It’s not a secret that it was not the most competitive (car) that we had to work with,” Mueller told FEN. “And I think we managed to pull out some very good results when the opportunity was there. We had many, many good results, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh places, so I’m very happy with that. And I think we’ve shown that even in difficult times, we can really extract the maximum from the package we have.”
NEOM McLaren’s Sam Bird was taken out of his home race on Sunday after getting hit by Jehan Daruvala on the first lap. It left the Formula E veteran saying that he was “not entirely sure what his thought process was, so it was very disappointed to finish the race like that. It was not what any of the team deserve. Daruvala has apologised, fine, but that doesn’t help me and it’s the second time he’s taken me out this year.”
Also caught up in an incident in the early stages on Sunday and largely an innocent party was Mahindra’s Edoardo Mortara when taken out via a shunt with Jake Dennis, who was subsequently penalised for the incident.
- “We had the incident with Jake (Dennis), and he sent me straight into the wall that broke the entire suspension, front left, nose, everything, and then the car went straight. He properly sent me into the wall, unfortunately it caused him to also to retire, but at some point you can’t send people straight into the wall.”
Nissan petitioned for a review of the 5-second penalty handed to Sacha Fenestraz after Saturday’s incident with former teammate Norman Nato. The supposed new evidence was dismissed by the stewards as not being relevant to the original decision. Fenestraz, who was bumped from sixth place to a classified 14th, told FEN that he “completely disagreed “ with the penalty for the shunt.
- “We were fighting for position with Norman, he goes on my outside, we brake side by side, got my front wheel with his rear wheel and he starts turning like in front there and eventually of course we make contact because we run out of road.
- “Unfortunately, the consequence is the crash and, once again, they penalise the consequence, they just give the penalties without any thinking back or at least having the opinion of both drivers. I think everyone has the same comment about the inconsistency of the penalties and, again, penalising on the consequence and not really on the facts of what’s going on.”
Nato’s opinion of the incident was clear, with the Andretti driver saying that “(Fenestraz) had to lift so early because at some point he couldn’t even finish the race, so I just went on the outside, it was done. I think he released the brake and he just touched my rear left and I went in the Techpro, so my race was done.”
Antonio Felix da Costa criticised Oliver Rowland for the contact that took them both out of contention in Saturday’s race, telling FEN that he “got put in the wall completely” and that, from Rowland, it was “a bit of a sore loser moment from him.
- “He’s obviously a great racer and he’s a guy that goes forwards but sometimes in life you have to give up and it doesn’t look like he knows how to and he ended both of our races,” added da Costa.
Maximilian Guenther, who The Race revealed today will join DS Penske for next season, rounded off his two seasons with Maserati MSG with two strong showings over the London weekend that went unrewarded.
- “Race One was perfect until a few laps before the end when we had the gearbox failure, and in Race Two as well, we did a fantastic qualifying despite all of the difficulties around changing the gearbox,” said Guenther.
- “The race was tough, and we struggled a lot with balance and understeer, but fifth or sixth was within reach. Unfortunately, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time with Nick [Cassidy] getting the puncture in front. He tried to pit but I was directly behind him, broke my wing, and my race was over with the suspension damage after. We gave it our all and it just wasn’t meant to be.”
Maserati MSG driver Jehan Daruvala, who is likely to have raced in his final Formula E races with the team at London, described to FEN the build-up and moment of his retirement from Saturday’s race after being hit by Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS Penske car. “He was coming for a few laps,” said Daruvala. “I could see that he was being super aggressive and he was behind me and I was just trying to stay calm and be fair. But in the end he took me out and he got the penalty for it.”
A Formula E Holdings board meeting took place ahead of the London EPrix last week in London. Several Liberty executives also attended the finale in Docklands at the weekend. Formula E Operations are expected to make several changes to its staff structure later this month ahead of its 11^th season in 2024-25 which kicks off at Sao Paulo in December.
Among the guests seen over the weekend in London were former winner Alex Lynn, ex Mahindra test driver and now WEC LMGT3 racer Daniel Juncadella and leading female talents Abbi Pulling and Jamie Chadwick who were in attendance via their involvement with the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia. Pulling did some demonstration laps in a Gen3 car and is expected to represent Nissan at the all-female test planned for early November at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia.