Sam Bird missed out on a potential top six finish after a wild London EPrix yesterday, in which he went from a disastrous opening lap to an off-set strategy that almost paid big dividends.
The NEOM McLaren driver, who could be competing in his final EPrix today after an 11-season career in Formula E, was caught up in a first lap incident that was triggered when Maximilian Guenther was in collision with Edoardo Mortara’s Mahindra and stopped after breaking the suspension of his DS Penske.
“It’s just typical of this track, isn’t it? It’s too narrow for that opening lap,” a disappointed Bird told Formula E Notebook after the race.
“It’s just too narrow and we see it year in, year out. There’s always a blockage or something between two to seven somewhere in that area and it happened again.
“Max (Guenther) has gone into the wall with contact with somebody else. Taylor (Barnard) parked behind him, and I was in the line behind him, and I’ve had to stop. I’ve been hit up the back, pushed into Taylor. And that was that.
“So, then we’re at the back and then Taylor didn’t see the rest of the pack going under safety cars, so that put us back.”
While Barnard was penalized further after being deemed not to have kept to within 10-car lengths of the field, Bird was told by his engineer Stephen Lane to accomplish several qualifying laps to bridge the gap to the rest of the field so that they take advantage of the off-strategy approach.
He got up to a fighting fifth place but was “struggling a bit (on energy) but reckoned that the gamble on spending early energy after stopping when the SOC window opened was “the only opportunity we had, so I think we executed the plan really well, but it just didn’t happen for us today.”
“I feel like we’ve had a really decent race again. Just no points,” added Bird. “We missed out on going to attack one lap earlier, otherwise we would have lost one position, not three. We had the potential to finish P6. It hasn’t happened.”
Last Lap Drama
Bird’s race effectively ended on the final lap when an unseen collision with former teammate Robin Frijns damaged one of his Hankook tyres and wheel at the rim and valve.
“I was just fighting hard, and he went deep into one, just nicked my tyre valve and all the air comes out of my tyre,” he added.
The McLaren driver was given special dispensation by the stewards to use a so-called ‘joker’ tyre for the Sunday race later today. The incident with Frijns, which occurred at Turn 3, brought a decision of no further action from the stewards, of which former Mahindra and Andretti driver Alexander Sims is acting as driver advisor again this weekend.
Frijns told FEN that the incident was “a racing incident” because “we were side by side for three corners. We touched twice. I’m trying to give the guy space and I’m not sure if he’d know that I was still there in T4, and we hit again and got a puncture. So, it’s just very unfortunate for him.”
When asked if the London ExCeL venue was now just too tight for Formula E to race on Bird said that “it’s a fantastic venue for light displays, for sound, for giving an indoor experience to motorsport but you can’t overtake.
“It’s not my favourite circuit. I don’t think it makes for great racing. It can make for a great spectacle, but it doesn’t make for great racing.”
