Pepe Marti won’t forget his Formula E debut.
Unfortunately, it won’t be for the reasons he hoped after his ginormous accident, when he vaulted off the back of Antonio Felix da Costa’s Jaguar to absolute destruction, after a late Full Course Yellow was called to retrieve, ironically, the other Jaguar of Mitch Evans.
Marti mostly owned his error in not slowing sufficiently in time for the reduction to 50kph form racing speed. His response to the aftermath was calm, lucid and rationale. That was impressive considering both the violence of the accident and his clear bitter disappointment in both wrecking his chances of maiden points and, quite comprehensively his CUPRA Kiro Porsche.
There was some inaccurate information flowing through the paddock and media centre yesterday in relation to what drivers are stipulated to achieve when an FCY is deployed. Here are the facts.
As per the drivers briefing documents signed by all 20 competitors on Friday evening, drivers must adhere to the following, as per event notes 3.1.
‘There will be 3 to 0 countdown by radio from Race Control to Drivers and teams. When the countdown is at 0, the boards and flags will be shown on the track. The maximum time to reduce speed to 50 kph is 5 seconds.’
Now, at Sao Paulo the radio coverage and clarity for some cars was said by a selection of teams to be of poor quality throughout the day on Saturday. However, this was used in an excusive manner by Marti, who was said to have accepted his part in the incident fully.
Formula E Notebook understands that CUPRA Kiro only records their intercoms in terms of internal discussions between the team, and not the race control messages themselves.
Most importantly of all, Marti was completely unharmed in the accident which even just a decade ago could have resulted in injury.
The savage first impact on the roll-hoop was sickening but that it was it is designed to absorb in the stringent FIA safety crash tests that Formula E and all modern racing cars go through.
“I’m okay. I’m more hurt mentally than physically, to be fair,” Marti told Formula E Notebook and other media after the incident.
“Unfortunately, it’s not the first time I’ve been upside down in a race car. I was in Baku (F2) a year and a half ago, and unfortunately, I know what it’s like.
“I just put my hands on my shoulders, on my chest, and just kept safe. And thankfully, I’m all OK. That’s thanks to the FIA.
“I jumped out quickly. And I saw the front was obviously under the car and on fire. It was literally burning the chassis. So, I was like, come on, get here. And they were really struggling to get over the gate. Which, nothing against them (the marshals) but they were struggling to get through that safety gate.
“I was just trying to accelerate things. Obviously, I knew the car was really damaged anyways. But if I can help in any way to reduce some of it after what was done. I was trying to help.”
For context Marti was signed very late by CUPRA Kiro and despite four days of testing at Valencia he had just the ‘dummy race’ in Spain to practice, in real life scenarios at least, the procedures required for race suspension protocols.
Then in São Paulo he lost a chunk of free practice time after the communications issues on Friday, before he thrust into his debut. He was in fact having a very strong race and in line to score points before the accident.
Additionally, fellow rookie (although technically he is not after his Berlin cameos last July), Felipe Drugovich made a similar misjudgment in overtaking Nick Cassidy under FCY. He though gave himself space to avoid a collision, although he was penalised for the offence and lost sixth position as a result.
“I mean, we were on for a really good result,” said Marti after the race.
“As a rookie, first time, we missed FP yesterday. Broke a wishbone in the first half of the day (after tagging the wall) and we were looking at a top five.
“We turned things around well. As a team, I think everybody did their job really, really well. Strategy-wise, we were looking for a very good result.
“Performance-wise, it was very good at that point. So, I’m very pissed off at the end that way.”
How the Shunt Happened
Marti was detailed in his explanation of the accident after he’d returned from a review of the accident with Antonio Felix da Costa and Nico Mueller from the stewards.
“I mean as a driver, especially, you come from F3, F2, even in the virtual safety car, you’re 0.0s or aiming for 0.1s at the end of it,” he said.
“You’re pushing the limits a lot. What I practiced in Valencia and what I practiced in the simulator was trying, when the actual full-course yellow kicks in… Obviously, the conditions start before. But on the rule book, it says you have to be 50 kph after the countdown and I was on course to make it.
“If there wasn’t anyone ahead of me, I wouldn’t have crashed, and it would have been legal. So, that’s a bit of an unfortunate situation where, obviously, Antonio knows the championship a lot better than I do. He knows there’s probably very little gain in pushing that FCY. And it was slightly earlier than I anticipated. Therefore, Nico went to the left, and it’s a straight track. The walls don’t move if you need them to move. It was either go left into the wall and into Nico, go right into Antonio in the wall or try to make it work and maybe they move around.
“Obviously, that didn’t happen. I ended up going to the back of them all. Obviously, it was an avoidable contact. But I think my mentality maybe was wrong going into the FCY rather than the actual procedure of doing it.”
A Fair Penalty?
The FIA after analysing the incident elected to issue four penalty points and a sanction for the Mexico City EPrix in which Marti, wherever he qualifies will start the race from the back of the grid.
The stewards reflected that the penalty was deliberately severe because it ‘represents a worse-case scenario in terms of safety.’
Regarding the next event sporting sanction Marti’s was relatively sanguine, saying that “I expected that. I mean, it makes sense” But he was “more pissed off about the four penalty points, especially with the new 12 points as a race ban. You know, it’s my first race.
“Instead of the usual two, I get four, which, obviously, I understand the severity of the incident and the consequences.
“But you see the race, see what happened at Turn 1 (de Vries/Ticktum contact), which was no further action, and you see a bit of how the race was going with many avoidable contacts, I would say, with many drivers.
“To get four points, I disagree with. The championship which is 18 (sic) races. It’s a very contact sport inside of a non-contact sport, if that makes sense, Formula E.
“Obviously, now I’m going to have to actually take care of that. I’m a very safe driver. I hope the stewards don’t think I’m not just because of a first FCY incident.”
The actual race was an eye-opener for Marti who said that he was “quite pissed off at some of the drivers.
“I understand that it’s a contact sport and positions are very valuable in Formula E. But I was quite surprised at the level of contact that there is in the Formula racing series and driving standards are sometimes below what I expected.
“During the competition, obviously, I made a mistake, and that’s me to blame. But I’ll have to adapt, because that’s probably not going to be OK.”
Antonio Felix da Costa, who was an involuntary vault in the incident told FEN that Marti was clearly trying to optimise the time loss in going 50kph on countdown and essentially misjudged things.
“The only thing is, I know when the rookie comes in, they would have tried 20 times in the sim to teach him how to optimise full course yellow,” said da Costa.
“So, his mentality was ‘I’m going to go as late as possible.’ But with three laps to go in the race, when the energies are kind of locked, nobody’s going to pass anyone anymore. Just bring it home now.
“So, he was like ‘man, you’re absolutely right.’ So, I can’t drill on the kid anymore.”
