Jaguar’s team principal Ian James has described the incident between his driver Antonio Felix da Costa and CUPRA Kiro’s Dan Ticktum while battling for the final podium position “an accident waiting to happen.”
Ticktum was penalized for the shunt which occurred on the run in to the Nouvelle Chicane just after another skirmish which saw both cars by-pass the chicane while fighting. Da Costa and Jaguar felt that Ticktum moved line in the braking area to trigger the shunt, which the stewards concurred with stating that ‘Car 33 (Ticktum) reacted to the presence of Car 13 (da Costa) by changing direction towards the inside of the track. As a consequence of this movement under braking, Car 13 was no longer able to avoid contact and collided with the rear of Car 33.’
“We knew that Dan was struggling, I think both on energy and tyres,” James told Formula E Notebook. “He’d been reporting that over the radio but for three laps preceding the incident, he was moving under braking.
“We were reporting that as well as we could. In the hope that that message would be passed on. Whether it was or not, I don’t know at this stage. But my personal feeling is that if that behavior didn’t change, it was almost an accident waiting to happen. So, very frustrating.”
When asked if da Costa could have been more patient to try for a cleaner move, knowing that Ticktum was struggling with energy targets and an ill-handling car, due mostly to overheating tyres, James said that “he could have done but hindsight is a wonderful thing. What we’ll do now is sit down with Antonio, with the team, and just play it back to as painful as that sometimes can be.
“But you learn from these things,” added James. “We need to now understand where we’re at in the season, with the races that are still to come. We’ve still got eight races to go, so there’s still a lot to get our teeth into, on how we want to approach it and how we want to manage those kinds of situations going forward. And I think it does develop on a race-by-race basis.
“It’s not as if you can say ‘ok, we’re going to fix it now and we’ll play the same strategy out every single race.’ But we need to do that together with Antonio. He’s already spoken about it, so he’s very open to doing that. And then we’ll take it from there.”
Da Costa and Ticktum did not speak after the incident, despite the Jaguar driver wanting to discuss the altercation. Ticktum left the circuit immediately after returning to his pit and changing clothes. He was subsequently fined €1000 for missing his post-race media commitments.
“I think he’d like to speak with Dan, just to understand his side of the story, and so that both of them can talk about it openly,” said James.
“You know what Antonio’s like. He’s somebody that would rather talk about these things than let them fester. So, yeah, I’m sure, hopefully, they’ll have the opportunity to do that when Dan’s back at the circuit.”
CUPRA Kiro was also issued with another reprimand for breaching Articles 3.9 and 14.1 of the Sporting Regulations. This unusual fine was issued for its development driver Bianca Bustamante accessing the podium by ‘improperly using accreditation items associated with Miss Bustamante’s permanent yellow pass.’
The pass was withdrawn from the detailed associate of Bustamante’s.
