Mahindra’s Friday of two halves saw a brilliant pole position from Edoardo Mortara followed up by a strong second place to winner Pascal Wehrlein. But on the other side of the Indian garage Nyck de Vries was out of his overalls as the first lap ended, via a suspected battery issue on his Mahindra M12Electro.
But Mortara’s healthy 21-point haul has helped push Mahindra into second place in the points standings, a position it has not held in the Gen3 era at all.
For team principal Frederic Bertrand it was a bitter/sweet day, but one that he was looking at in a positive light when Formula E Notebook spoke to him after the race.
“I would have loved to have the second milestone checked in the same day with a win,” said Bertrand.
“What I think was very interesting is the way he (Mortara) managed all the weekend. Because yesterday we had some issues and he kept concentrated, and then we came this morning with kind of a new setup to start the morning to understand what happened the day before. It was not perfect, but he also remained very concentrated, he was super strong on 300kW.”
Mortara’s race didn’t start promisingly when he got a huge amount of wheelspin off the line and plummeted to seventh position amid a barging match with Norman Nato’s Nissan at the first complex of corners.
The immediate speculation was that Mortara’s was not in the 350kW all-wheel-drive mode at the start of the race, but this was essentially rejected by Bertrand.
“I think maybe a small mistake at the start, probably the tyre got cold because he waited quite a while from the others,” was Bertrand’s view.
“He did the burnout, which was a bit smaller than the others. So maybe something else, I don’t know. But nothing major.”
Appraising the race overall Bertrand pinpointed being especially pleased about the overall performance of Mortara’s car. Several rivals were forced to manage their temperatures in stages of the race especially the relatively new rule on average power use.
“What is nice to see is that we have a car that is much more efficient now,” said Bertrand.
“And we can really fight with a good pace and give him the possibility of fighting hard. Then he did it quite smartly on the way to stay behind for a while. But on the other side, keep the pace quite high when it was needed. And then good strategy from the guys.”
On the finer point of the overall strategy, Bertrand said that “the attack mode was always a question, should we wait until an eventual safety car is coming and then we can catch up Pascal? or should we go for it and protect from the others? We did a little bit in the middle.
“But at the end, I think it was a good choice. Because it was important to secure those points of the second position. He definitely wanted to go for P1. I don’t know if you heard the radio, but he was saying, ‘no, no, I want to go for the win.’ But there was one lap left and two seconds and a half was a bit too much.”
De Vries disappointed again
Nyck de Vries’ challenging start to the 2025-26 season continued in Jeddah on Friday after a catastrophic failure on the grid delayed the start and saw his Mahindra pushed in to the pit lane. A suspected inverter problem that left him with no drive is believed to have been the issue that curtailed his race.
De Vries has scored 32-points less than teammate Mortara now and needs a strong Saturday in Jeddah.
“What can I say,” de Vries told FEN.
Prior to that the 2021 champion said his qualifying performance saw him unable to quite get his Hankooks in to the “sweet spot” and that he “missed a little bit of potential from that and then I didn’t really nail my lap together.
“I made a small mistake exit turn 13 and I clipped the wall, then I was conservative into the chicane. I think if I had just put my lap together it would have been just enough for the Duels, but I clearly didn’t manage to put my tyres into the same sweet spot as some others were able to.”
De Vries’ team boss Bertrand added that the precise issue with the inverter was seeing the team “investigating if is it coming from BMS (battery management system) or other elements, maybe inverter, we don’t know yet. We are still looking at it and trying to understand exactly what happened because you had a sequence that was quite strange.
When asked what de Vries saw on his dash Bertrand said that “he started with the drive, but the car didn’t want to move.”
“For Nyck it’s tough because he did at the end a tough beginning of season. And we thought that starting P11 here he could have had a good chance to get into, maybe not the top 5 but probably the top 8 or top 6 maybe. So, it’s a shame for him, for the confidence level and for us, for the points,” concluded Bertrand.
Team statement issued by Mahindra at 14:45pm Jeddah time on Saturday 14 February 2026. ‘Following yesterday’s technical issues, the team made the decision to carry out a complete hardware change to give Nyck the best possible platform moving forward.
This change, made in accordance with Sporting Regulations, means Nyck starts today’s race with a grid penalty – but our focus is clear: reset on solid foundations and approach the remainder of the season with confidence.‘
