Race Reaction
The safety car inducing shunt between rookies Zane Maloney and David Beckmann was deemed a racing accident by stewards after Maloney’s Lola Yamaha Abt inadvertently broke the steering arm on the CUPRA KIRO run Porsche on entry in to the Foro Sol.
Beckmann, who ran strongly on the periphery of the top ten briefly, despite some damage to his front wing, described the collision as “not the fault of anyone.”
“Zane was in attack behind me,” added Beckmann. “I mean, turn 12 is not really a place where you normally overtake, but he tried to do a move. I saw him, I actually wanted to let him go, but I think he braked really late and realised that he’s a bit too quick.”
“I actually went to switch back on him, but he slowed down so much that I just touched his rear right. So, it was very unfortunate.”
Maloney told FEN that “I had a lot more power than him and I went for the move. He obviously didn’t see me coming, and then tried to cover it quite late. But at that stage you have to commit. So, I committed to my braking.
“I mean, of course, I missed the apex by a small amount, but I made the corner fine. And I think he just misjudged a little bit where his where his front wing was.”
The Lola Yamaha Abt driver was one of the stars of qualifying having claimed ninth position in only his second EPrix . But for a mistake in Sector 2 might have been able to make the duel phase. His race started badly with a power cut on lap one, which is believed to be a software related issue. Lola will test later this month in attempt to iron out multiple technical teething and operational issues that have come to the fore in the first two races.
“In terms of efficiency, we’re not where we want to be,” Maloney told FEN. “There’s a long way to go for the team, but from Brazil, it’s a big step forward in terms of how we’ve gone about the weekend, the pace in the car, also my driving. I’m optimistic about the future, but it will take some time to get where we want to be.
“I think the biggest positive about this weekend was qualifying and how strong we were. Then the biggest thing to work on is all the faults and errors and everything that we’re struggling with right now that is not pace related. We need to try to sort that out as quickly as possible.”
Jake Dennis’ fourth place was met with a resigned response after a tenacious race from the 2023 champion, who although led at one stage was unable to compete with the factory Porsches over the full race distance.
The Andretti driver told FEN “we were just slow when it mattered” but that at the start of the race “we were looking quite good, the efficiency was quite strong, and then as soon as we had a great strategy from the team to put me in a position to take the lead, the efficiency was terrible, we just had no pace.”
Dennis was at a loss to pinpoint precisely why that was the case but he did go through a stage of hurt with his front left Hankook although it was not believed to be too detrimental.
“I got fastest lap right at the end of the race, so I think everyone’s tyres were pretty screwed,” he said. “I just had to drop back in behind DAC and Pascal, try and just save and save, then wait for Rowland to come at me with his six minutes. It looked like it was going to be close, he might have got me anyway, but obviously that Safety Car changed everything.
“Ultimately, I said before the race, if I finish top four we’ve had a very, very good race, and I honestly think we did the maximum we could today.”
Edoardo Mortara’s race was compromised by an early puncture inflicted whilst in a battle with teammate Nyck de Vries and the NEOM McLaren Nissan of Sam Bird. A naturally disappointed Mortara initially believed that his teammate de Vries had caused the contact when in fact it was Bird’s McLaren Nissan that caused the punctured Hankook.
“I was not sure who it was but it made everything collapse,” the dejected Mahindra driver told FEN.
“We were coming from an extremely difficult free practice. But in the end actually in qualifying, we were still able to go through the group phases and it looked quite promising for points because the race pace could have been quite ok actually.”
DS Penske collected a solid fifth and sixth position with Jean-Eric Vergne and teammate Maximilian Guenther working in tandem during large swathes of the EPrix. Deputy Team Principal and technical chief Phil Charles told FEN that “JEV and Max did work well together and they were complementary for each other on attack modes. We had a slight offset in attack at one point and then we attacked them together to go forward, so they did work nicely together.”
Charles said that he and the DS Penske team knew from an early stage that they were essentially in a different race to the Porsches and Rowland’s Nissan, stating that “we knew probably about 10 laps in that we were having to be very precise to try and keep our game in a good shape.
“They (Porsche) looked like they’d got a bit in their pocket. So, I think if you assess the race at lap 10, you’d probably say ‘well we’ve been doing a kind of perfect race so far and we’re half a percent down and we’re starting to be on the edge of everything.’
“It might swing around in the next few races, but at this race I think we delivered pretty well on our package. But we had to be right on everything, absolutely on the nail.”
Envision Racing team principal Sylvain Filippi said he found positives from a difficult day for the Chinese owned team that saw no points collected after Robin Frijns finished 11th and Sebastien Buemi 17th. Both drivers were ultimately compromised by the throttle pedal map penalties from qualifying that forced them in to creative energy save strategies in the EPrix itself, and in Buemi’s case he was penalised along with Lucas di Grassi and Edo Mortara for not being able to take the full amount of attack mode before the end of the race.
“When you start at the back, and it’s really hard to overtake here, it meant our plan was to stay at the back, save energy, and then attack at the end,” Filippi confirmed to FEN.
“It almost worked out pretty well because Robin went to P12 with the first attack mode, and then the first safety car arrived, so we initially thought we’re going to be in the shit because we’ve run out of time. But then it finished at the perfect time because we had just enough laps for Robin to use his second attack mode, and then he would have been in the points.”
“Seb had his full six minutes, as well as a lot more energy. That was looking really quite good. I mean, not winning the race, obviously, but we could have made the points, and then the second safety car arrived and destroyed everything.”
Norman Nato’s Mexico City EPrix was compromised by what Nissan boss Tommaso Volpe described to FEN as “poor execution of qualifying from the team for him” that saw him finish a lowly 13th.
“We must apologise to him because as a team we didn’t manage the group in quali well, so he never was in a position to actually push and to enter in the duels, because he never really got into the right window with the tyres,” confirmed Volpe.
“His race pace was strong, and he has been unlucky the first race (São Paulo), and we didn’t put him in the best conditions here. I’m sure he will deliver, and he will be strong during the season.”
NEOM McLaren kept its second position in the teams’ standings despite not scoring a point in Mexico City. Sam Bird was handed a five-second penalty for contact with Edoardo Mortara’s Mahindra early in the race and was classified 18th and then Taylor Barnard’s 10th place finish was taken from him when he was adjudged to have gained an advantage at Turn 16 and he dropped to 14th after another otherwise strong showing.
Ahead of the Mexico City EPrix event the TAG-Heuer Porsche team was fined €5000 when the crash detection system was found not to be ‘functional’ after Pascal Wehrlein’s violent accident in São Paulo last month. The stewards report identified that after ‘investigations after the crash in the Race of Round 1 found out that the crash detection system was not functional at the time of the accident, which resulted in the automatic switch off system not working.’
Toronto A-Go-Go?
FEN understands that a delegation from the city of Toronto visited the Mexico City EPrix paddock this week and held talks with Formula E race makers about a potential future race in the Canadian city for 2027. Toronto has both a rich heritage of hosting motorsport events with the Indycar street race and a strong sustainability and EV promotion credentials.
Future Japanese Behemoth Questions
The news over the Christmas break that Nissan and Honda plan to merge in an effort to fight against competition from the Chinese car industry will not affect Nissan’s Formula E future according to its team principal Tommaso Volpe.
“What’s happening on the core business side is not different from what is happening to many other brands in the industry at the moment,” Volpe told FEN.
“This has no impact on our (Formula E) plan. The involvement in Formula E has been approved to promote ’Ambition 2030’, which is a corporate objective of Nissan. That hasn’t changed. So no, I don’t see this having any impact.”
Staffing Matters
The CUPRA KIRO squad is expanding as various positions have recently been advertised including a new Technical Director, Race Engineer and Head of Performance. The team has had a relatively stable headcount in recent years but is now expanding after securing its future through new owners at the Forest Road Company, the new commercial deal with CUPRA and the technical alliance with Porsche.
Eric Ernst, Vice President of Technology at Formula E Operations is set to leave Formula E after a seven year stint in the role and will be succeeded on an interim basis by FE and E1 Series consultant Dan Cherowbrier.
“Dan’s been around the Formula E ecosystem for a long time and is one of the current technology consultants who has an incredible background in media and entertainment technology,” Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds told FEN.
“Eric’s going to be leaving us at some point in the near future. Not imminently, but at some point in the future and Dan will step in on an interim basis. But we haven’t announced any permanent replacement or structural change or anything like that. Dan’s holding the fort and he’ll do that impeccably.”
Why Mexico Isn’t ‘Double Bubble’
FEN put to Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds a question asked by several competitors over the course of the week in Mexico City. Why isn’t arguably Formula E’s most successful event a double header?
“The circuit’s fantastic, everything is structured well and the teams love coming here with 40,000 people,” said Dodds. “I think what we need to see when we do a double header is the capacity we have and can we deliver a great fan experience over two days, not just one day?
“I think if we thought we could get 39,500 people in here two days in a row, it would be a brilliant double header. If we thought we’d end up with 22,000 each day, I think you’d lose some of the lovely ambience of the Foro Sol and that energy you get.
“Of course, as always we don’t know that answer because we haven’t tried it. It’s a question we’ve asked as well. If we could sustain it for two days, then we would do,” concluded Dodds.
Perez Snr in the House
Sergio Perez’s farther Antonio visited the Mexico City EPrix and was a big attraction for the 40,000 strong crowd. Ex F1 driver Perez is taking a six-month sabbatical to consider his future but is not believed to be initially interested in pursuing a role away from anything F1 related in the next few years.
