Race Reactions
Pascal Wehrlein told Formula E Notebook after Saturday’s race that he believed the relative lack of pace shown by Porsche at Jeddah was partly down to the “different types of tracks and different types of tracks which suit one car better or the other.”
Wehrlein added that “for example, Mexico is a track which is somehow perfect for our car. Now, being here for the first time it looked like they (Nissan) were super strong. It might be that the next race we again have the edge but what is obvious is that it’s not going to be easy, and we need to really work hard to improve our car, improve our package.”
The reigning champion also revealed a potential secret weapon for the calendar gap could be deployed, joking that “we will ask (Sergio) Agüero what he thinks about the car in two weeks. Maybe he can give some advice.”
Third placed finisher on Saturday, Jake Hughes, said that Taylor Barnard’s defence of second position on the final lap was “on the edge” of acceptability but didn’t overly criticise the NEOM McLaren sensation.
“I suppose I’ll leave it up to the powers that be, if they want to say it’s over the limit or not,” the Maserati MSG driver told FEN. “I felt like, during braking, I was ahead, and I deserved a bit of a right to some room, let’s say. I get it in the heat at the moment though, Taylor wants to fight for everything he’s got and probably I would do something similar. But yeah, I wasn’t so enamored with it at the time. But I’ve probably cooled off a bit now.”
Maximilian Guenther was deeply apologetic toward Antonio Felix da Costa after wiping both of them out of contention at the start of Saturday’s race. The Friday victor visited the Porsche pit to offer his apologies and explanations, while Jay Penske also talked to senior Porsche staff.
“Antonio had actually nothing to do with the braking and what happened earlier in that move,” Guenther told FEN. “Things were getting very tight in Turn 1, Turn 2. The inside was open, I tried to get alongside, touched my brakes, locked the front axle, tried to get the car stopped, but I couldn’t, and Antonio was just there.
“I mean, I was nowhere near having a fight with him and he was the victim. I feel very sorry for him and for Porsche about this outcome.”
Da Costa largely accepted Guenther’s apology but also told FEN that: “I don’t know what Max was thinking or where his head was at. He came to apologise, but apologies need to be avoided, especially in a race like today that is so long and so slow in the beginning. You have more than enough time to get yourself to where you want to be. I really can’t understand, and it hurts.”
The incident also severely compromised Mahindra’s Edoardo Mortara, who took the final point of the race after NEOM McLaren’s Sam Bird got a 5-second penalty added to his finish time for not stopping after running through the T10 run-off area. Mortara’s Friday race had been stronger, as he took seventh place in a double point finish for the Indian manufacturer, with Nyck de Vries excelling with a fourth-place finish.
“I would say that most of the progress that we’ve done today, was done in the first five to 10 laps,” Mortara told FEN.
“After that, it was a question of trying to manage the situation with attack mode and also with pit boost. Eventually the strategy that we had was not maybe the perfect one, because we ended up having a lot of laps actually alone on track without benefiting us, let’s say the slipstream, but yeah we learned, and next time, we will try to make it better.”
Despite a difficult week in Jeddah, Jaguar TCS Racing boss James Barclay was optimistic that the eight-week break could be the catalyst for a return to form for the Big Cat, which has now slipped to seventh and fourth in the teams and manufacturers championships respectively.
“The gap is a good thing for us, and we can use that gap effectively,” said Barclay. “There’s definitely quite a bit we can go at, and that’s going to be the focus. But if you look at the ingredients, there are signs there. A good 300kW pace, getting cars through the duels (on Friday) so, we just need to kind of put those ingredients together the proper way and be able to find that consistent pace.
“In the debrief just now, just talking to the team, my point was if we can kind of close this one-lap performance and get that consistency, we’re a really strong racing team, we have a really strong race car, and we’ve shown that again today, going all the way forward to maybe a podium with Nick where he finished. We just need to find that one-lap pace,” concluded Barclay.
Nick Cassidy, who drove a very strong race from 17th to fifth on Saturday, told FEN that “it was clear it was the four of us” (Jaguar powered drivers) that lacked out-right pace in Jeddah.
“We realised that early, but it put us into a position where we then spent a lot of sessions with crazy new setups, trying to experiment and find a window for this car. I mean, ultimately it’s still a new car, it’s still a new tyre, and we were really out of the window. So instead of probably running something that we knew and accepting that we could be 11th, I just took it on to experiment.
“Okay, that’s never ideal. You’re never going to win a race like that. But I think it’s more important to try and find solutions for the future.”
Jaguar’s sporting director Gary Ekerold was forced to miss the Jeddah Eprix meeting after sustaining an Achilles tendon injury while challenging Cassidy to a game of squash earlier this month. FEN wishes Ekerold, who returned to his duties in the Jaguar office quickly and was aided via a fully liveried team scooter!, a speedy recovery and quick return to the paddock.
Saturday’s race saw Lucas di Grassi disqualified for going over the total energy allowed (42.35kWh). But despite several technical carryover penalties, from changing components in recent races, di Grassi showed the potential of the Lola Yamaha ABT alliance in Saturday’s race by surging in to a brief second place before eventually finishing in 16th.
“It was a much better day (Saturday) today and we made huge improvements in the car and in qualifying we managed to decrease the gap to P1 by half a second compared to yesterday,” summarised di Grassi.
“Then in the race I did the best I could, going from P16 to P2 but the efficiency is still not quite there, and we couldn’t really stay in the top 10 and ended up dropping back to P16 at the end. Although that was frustrating, I think we learnt a lot this weekend, we collected a lot of good data for the break to study and improve and we’ll arrive stronger in Miami.”
Despite the success of Oliver Rowland scoring two wins and a second place in the last three races and opening up a 17-point drivers’ championship advantage, Nissan are only a single point ahead of customer team NEOM McLaren in the teams’ title race.
That is down to only Oliver Rowland contributing to the points (68) scored so far, with Norman Nato one of only five drivers (Robin Frijns, David Beckmann and Lola duo Zane Maloney and Lucas di Grassi) yet to get off the mark this season.
“If you look at the numbers, unfortunately we haven’t scored points with Norman, which has been a combination of small mistakes by him and some mistakes by us, by the team,” Tommaso Volpe told FEN.
“So, it’s a very unfortunate combination of events. He (Nato) comes back from four races with zero points, and you don’t win the championship with one driver only. We have now eight weeks gap. I’m sure that other manufacturers and teams will come back stronger. If we don’t address our weakness that we still have obviously our advantage won’t last much.
“We really need to push and improve ourselves as a team because we made some mistakes. Norman has to be a little bit more careful and in the package (too). So everywhere we need to improve, still improve.”
CUPRA KIRO Welcomes Motivational Legend
Well-known mental and physical motivation practitioner Gerry Convy returned to the Formula E paddock with CUPRA KIRO after several seasons away after Mercedes EQ exited the series. Convy, who has worked closely with many drivers including Dario Franchitti, David Coulthard, and Juan Pablo Montoya in the past, has a new role working with the team on its overall team performance, although team principal Alex Hui also hinted he would spend time specifically with Dan Ticktum too.
Ticktum unveiled a new vintage radio rant after being forced to pit for a battery reset in Friday’s race when in a strong position.
The diatribe was circulated widely on social media, and also partly heard by FEN in real-time on the publicly available driver radio. The CUPRA KIRO driver then took to social media himself on Saturday explaining that “yesterday (Friday) was the buildup of a lot of bad luck and some very difficult times,” wrote Ticktum. “Most of you have no idea who the real me is, you just jump on a hate train. I will do a podcast/video soon to explain the truth about all the politics that I have suffered in my career and maybe some of you will understand why I’m so bloody frustrated all the time.”
2026 Calendar Aims
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds confirmed to FEN that the provisional 2025-26 calendar would be submitted to the FIA in May with “an intention” that there “would be no TBCs on that calendar and that’s absolutely the intention and I think there’s time to do that if we can,” added Dodds.
Dodds visited Phoenix in Arizona ahead of the Jeddah EPrix and FEN understands that there is a good prospect of the city hosting a street race next season. Phoenix played host to the US Grand Prix between 1989 and 1991.
A representative of the national promoter of the Tokyo EPrix, Satoru Tsuyama, was in Jeddah and confirmed to FEN that there would be some small track changes and also an increased capacity for spectators at the races in May with some extra grandstands at the Big Sight location.
Movements at MSG Maserati
Brookyln Earick was unveiled as the new Chairman and CEO of the Maserati MSG team on Saturday afternoon. Earick, a DJ, and former NASA employee, is believed to be discussing a possible injection of celebrity investors in the team ahead of the Homestead race in April.
Additionally, Philippe Huber made public on the Linked In social platform last week that he has started a position at the ‘advisory board of Maserati MSG.’ Hubert is a senior advisor at the Bin Zayed Group and at Araya International, a sports investment firm with offices in Europe, the Middle East and LATAM.
FIA Medal-ling?
FEN has uncovered plans for Formula E to follow suit with F1 in having FIA medals presented to the podium finishers in each race from the Homestead race onwards. The FIA introduced this initiative in F1 for the first time in 2022. The plans are likely to be officially communicated next month.
Viva Espana
With only two Spanish EPrixs having ever been run, at Valencia in April 2021, CUPRA motorsport boss Xavi Serra has told FEN that he would be supportive of a Spanish date on the calendar in the future.
“I think it would be nice to see an EPrix there not just because CUPRA has so many links but also because of the passion of racing in Spain, and the fact we have tests there and Formula E a base. It would be a nice story if it can happen in the future,” said Serra.
Meanwhile, the Circuit Ricardo Tormo continues to undergo repairs after the devastating and deadly floods that hit the Valencia area in early November. The process will be long and complex however with €11m euros allocated to reconstruction, although the circuit did officially re-open for events in early December.
The Circuit is located in Cheste, a town located in the Foia de Bunyol district, was one of the hardest hit regions. Although neither the track nor the main infrastructures were affected, the main access road and the parking areas were significantly damaged. The re-construction is ongoing and is being assisted by the TT Assen circuit in the Netherlands which has donated €50k and excavation machinery to the rebuild.
Celeb Watch
There were plenty of famous faces in Jeddah last week with Georgina Rodriguez, Cristiano Ronaldo’s partner, spending time with Porsche and Antonio Felix da Costa.
Singer and rap artist Akon made an appearance, while middleweight and super middleweight boxer Chris Eubank Jr also perused the grid.
Yevan David – Remember the Name!
Sri Lankan driver Yevan David was present in Jeddah as a guest of Mahindra and embedded himself with the team both behind and in front of the scenes over the course of the event. Seventeen-year-old David is expected to race in Euroformula Open this year after taking two wins on his debut in the series at the final event in Monza in 2024. Sri Lankan capital Colombo’s Port City Special Economic Zone is currently targeting international investment and attention, with a Formula 1 grade track once part of its plan.
Mind The Gap
Formula E Notebook will be attending the upcoming ‘Evo Sessions’ event in Miami next month in addition to bringing you more news and features until the next round of the 2024-25 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship at Homestead near Miami in mid-April.
