Fast Facts
Dan Ticktum’s third position in Sunday’s race was the first time that the current CUPRA KIRO licence entry, that has raced under a variety of previous names, has finished on the podium since the Mexico City EPrix in March 2018. Oliver Turvey claimed second place to the winning Audi of Daniel Abt on that occasion.
Nissan gained a 22 point swing over Porsche in the teams’ standings to vault the German manufacturer and earn a 15 point lead in the teams’ standings. Porsche also fell further behind their rivals in the new Manufacturers title race scoring 15 less points than Nissan meaning the gap between the two in that race is now 44 points.
Mitch Evans’ points famine stretched to eight races since his season opening win at Sao Paulo last December. Evans has never had such a run of non-scores in his eight and a half season Formula E career.
The cancelled qualifying session on Saturday was the first time that such a session has not been started in Formula E. The free practice sessions at Diriyah in November 2018 were cancelled due to poor weather with a combined practice prior to qualifying generated on that occasion.
The points discrepancy of 150 points between teammates Oliver Rowland and Norman Nato is by far the greatest ever in Formula E history at the halfway stage of a season. Nato has not scored in eight of the nine races this season, while Rowland has scored in every one apart from the season opener in Sao Paulo when he was, like Nato, penalised for an over-power infraction.
Formula E quoted an attendance of 30,000 over the weekend at the second Tokyo EPrix which was an increase of 10,000 on the inaugural attendance in March 2024. The total on-site event at the Big Sight exhibition centre was quoted at 90,000, incorporating the GX sustainability event and Formula E Fan Village.
Debrief: Tokyo Talk
One of CUPRA KIRO’s key ownership members Jeremy Tarica told FEN that there were “legitimate tears in the eyes of these guys in the team today” after Dan Ticktum’s third place on Sunday in Tokyo.
“Its 2633 days since the last podium for this team (at Mexico City in 2018), so the journey has just been really long and really tough, and I think it shows that resilience and perseverance in general,” added Tarica.
“These guys have had so many opportunities to just give up and they haven’t. We’ve got a car with the Porsche that is top notch, world championship winning. And now we just got to keep putting it together and try to unlock a new energy that has been missing for these guys. It’s not their fault, but it’s when you go years of falling short and having misfortune. I think kind of subconsciously have this mentality of ‘it’s not possible’, so today was all about saying it is possible. It was a chills moment. It all came together and it was just awesome.”
Porsche team principal Florian Modlinger told FEN that he believed Pascal Wehrlein was denied a chance of victory because of the late Safety Car to clear way Taylor Barnard’s crashed McLaren in the closing stages of the race.
“When you see how he (Rowland) approached and how he made the move at the end of race, it would have been an energy race,” he said.
“And when you saw how high in energy Dan Ticktum was, how high we were compared to Olli Rowland. You saw Pascal already attacking Olli when the safety car came out. And that’s a bit of a misfortune, I would say, and especially for the spectators. Because it would have been an exciting lap at the end and seeing how it would have gone. We would have had a chance to wrestle him down.”
Victorious Nissan team boss Tommaso Volpe said that despite a huge 77 point lead for Oliver Rowland and Nissan sitting atop both the teams and manufacturers tables, that thoughts of wrapping up the 2024-25 crowns this season were not being thought of with seven races remaining.
“As we said in Monaco already, at the end of May, after these six races of May, it’s a moment when we will sit down and look at the three championships and start planning our races in a more strategic way,” Volpe told FEN.
“I think it’s the most sensible approach. We want to see where we are. At the moment, it seems we will be able to fight for the three championships until the very end, but definitely we need to plan for that after Shanghai.”
Joining Volpe on the podium last weekend was Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa, who told FEN that he believed that Formula E is “gradually seeing the audiences growing everywhere organically” and that “this is one of the reasons we invested from the beginning.
“The future of the (automotive) industry is going to go there (electric). It’s a long-term commitment that we have made and we continue progressing as we go. I think in terms of potential, there’s a huge potential still. The fact that Nissan is the only mainstream brand today, I think it’s giving us a lot of advantages also for the future because we are growing also with the series and the audience is super strong.
“The exposure that we get is very solid. So, we expect a lot of things of the series for the future.”
Nick Cassidy completed a tyre change during the red flag period and set the fastest lap in the second phase of the Saturday race but ultimately finished 11th on the road before being promoted to 10th after Nyck de Vries’ penalty for hitting Mitch Evans at the pit exit was applied.
Edoardo Mortara was unfortunate not to get a podium in race one on Saturday after a technical issue saw him not being able to use his entire attack mode boost. FEN understands that a software issue was triggered by the red flag period and he only received two minutes of the six allocated on his last attack period. As a result, the Mahindra driver was not able to progress and was also picked off by Dan Ticktum for fifth place on the final lap.
Mortara’s teammate Nyck de Vries was penalised 5-seconds for the incident that caused Mitch Evans to crash in Saturday’s race. Mahindra appealed the decision via a petition of review but this was adjudged to be admissible and the review was unfounded on the grounds of ‘Car 21 (de Vries) should have slowed down before approaching T2 to avoid the collision. Car 21 passed the blue flags while leaving the pitlane and thus was in knowledge about a car arriving on track. Not crossing the white/blue/white pit exit line does not release Car 21 from its duty to ensure the priority of cars on track.’
The incident that triggered the red flag on Saturday was caused by a contactor fuelled isolation issue on Maximilian Guenther’s DS Penske that water in and around the connectors and looms in the back of the car.
Some questions were raised about if the race should have been red flagged immediately as Guenther had a very brief red car status that was cleared after a P0 re-set. FIA Formula E Race Director Marek Hanaczewski was visibly frustrated by the incident and that it caused a full race suspension at that point when the car went back to green status shortly after Guenther performed the re-set.
Jake Hughes’ Saturday race was ruined when he failed to get his Pit Boost energy hit at his mandatory stop. The Maserati MSG team failed to properly connect the plug in to its socket. FEN understands that teams have been told to hold the plug for a few seconds upon attaching to ensure that the weight of the cable doesn’t initially move the connector. It is believed that winner Stoffel Vandoorne’s stop was very close to seeing the same issue as Hughes botched stop.
Norman Nato remained upbeat despite showing strong pace but not scoring points at Tokyo last weekend. Sunday saw Nato suffer damage after contact with Stoffel Vandoorne and then a 5-second penalty applied for not slowing sufficiently when the full course yellow was deployed to remove debris from the track.
“Still a lot of positives, honestly,” Nato told FEN. “I was P2 in my qualifying group. The duel was going well until a small mistake at Turn 10 that cost me a good lap. Honestly, the car is going well. Congrats to the team, they are doing a great job, Oliver as well.”
Following his shunt in qualifying on Sunday Mitch Evans was not able to take the start of an EPrix for the first time in his eight and a half season Formula E career.
Evans’ had sustained significant damage to the rear of his Jaguar I-Type7 on Saturday after getting pitched in to the Turn 2 wall by Nyck de Vries’ Mahindra. A combination of the spare parts used via this incident and then the damage sustained on Sunday ensured Evans was unable to line-up for Sunday’s race. Additionally, the Kiwi will have to take a 40-place grid drop at Shanghai for going over his inverter and gearbox change quota for the season.
“Initially, we thought we’d have the car out – but ultimately there was just too much to do in the timeframe we had to get the car ready,” Jaguar TCS Racing team principal, James Barclay surmised.
Hyundai Latest
Formula E is still in regular contact with Hyundai about the possibility of the Korean manufacturer one day joining the all-electric World Championship. CEO Jeff Dodds met with the senior board of the company last year and Hyundai Sport boss Cyril Abiteboul is known to have visited NEOM McLaren and held talks with them last July.
“I think Hyundai are very interested in what we’re doing and it aligns very closely to their own development plans for car powertrains,” Dodds told FEN.
“They’re also in motorsport already (with Genesis in FIA WEC) which I think is good. Just a pure timing thing means that’s not possible now because Hyundai will say if they do something, we’ll do it properly.
“The next logical window was probably be the midpoint of the Gen4 cycle (2028) and I still think that’s a real possibility but I don’t count any chickens on that. I think there’ll be a lot of manufacturers that will see what the Gen4 car is as their own strategies develop around powertrain and they see this Gen4 car and they start to look towards Gen 5.”
The Power of Doddsy’s Dreams
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds visited Honda prior to the Tokyo EPrix. Dodds previously worked for the Japanese manufacturer as a Head of UK Marketing between 2002-2007.
“I went up to Honda this week and they are actually beginning to look more seriously at an all-electric option for the future,” Dodds told FEN.
“I had a lovely conversation but look don’t read too much into it. We’d obviously love to do more with them. But we forget, with Nissan and Yamaha already across six manufacturers, a third of them are already Japanese based.”
McLaren’s Bicester Tribute
NEOM McLaren team principal Ian James paid tribute to the three people that were killed in a fire at the Bicester Motion and Heritage facility that incorporates where NMFE is based in Oxfordshire, UK. Jennie Logan, Martyn Sadler and David Chester died in the incident last Thursday.
“What’s happened at Bicester is a tragedy,” James told FEN.
“We need to now get back home and actually support both Bicester Motion and the families that have been affected in any way that we can.”
Seen in Tokyo
Former Super GT racer Katsumasa Chiyo and former Venturi, Tyrrell and Minardi F1 driver Ukyo Katayama were on-site at Tokyo working for Fuji TV last weekend. Additionally, Miki Koyama who tested for Lola Yamaha ABT last November was also present, as was ‘Fast and Furious’ star Sung Kang, who is a known fan of Formula E.
