“It was bonkers,” Oliver Rowland told Formula E Notebook on Sunday evening in the almost intolerable zoo that is the Monaco media pen.
‘Bonkers’ is a suitably colloquial English word, one pertaining to madness or mayhem. It adequately describes an aspect of Sunday’s Monaco EPrix. But probably not in the context you think.
Rowland was detailing the wildcard pace increase deliberately unleashed by two rogue elements of the race. Edoardo Mortara and Nico Mueller.
Mortara, carrying a 10-second penalty for tipping Antonio Felix da Costa’s Jaguar into a spin, went on a mission to stretch the pace of the EPrix, simply to broaden his prospects of salvaging points. It worked to a point.
Mueller meanwhile went for a super aggressive lap three triggered six-minute attack plunge. He was 12th then but two laps led the race and upped the pace significantly. Rowland and Nissan didn’t panic.
“Edo wanted to go quite quickly, and then Nico took six minutes. It was just a bit wild. I was initially like, ‘what’s going on?’ detailed Rowland.
“It was a completely different race to what we expected, but I knew it wasn’t sustainable, what they were doing.
“The energy took longer to build than the short attack mode, the first one. I still used it as like a save in attack mode, because I still didn’t have the energy.
“So, I said ‘I’m going to go and do two minutes’ at least get one activation out of the way. Keep building, not do too much attacking, and then leave it all for the later attack mode.”
The plan worked a treat and was further evidence of Rowland sometimes leading the strategic calls when they needed to be adapted.
“We discuss most scenarios, so it’s a case of just executing it,” added Rowland.
“I think we’re at a stage now where they (the team) trust me. But I think the last attack was on them because at first I had six plus two. That was kind of my plan. And then I switched it to two plus six, and I didn’t tell them. So, they’d have probably been a little bit surprised when that came up.”
At one stage Rowland was running ninth and looking like he might get swallowed up a bit, as Ticktum did but “he only got swallowed to about to where I was” said Rowland, who’s confidence in his strategy never wavered.
“I knew I was two, three percent up, and I knew even my target wasn’t that good. So, I thought, those guys, at some point, they have to put the brakes on.
That happened pretty much when Rowland took the last six minutes of attack mode. The full course yellow helped a lot of Rowland competitors who were running a bit marginal on their energy targets.
One aspect of frustration for Rowland was that while he knew what those around him were up to strategically, so too his rivals were cute to the Nissan’s two minute hit. This is more evidence that drivers are much more clued up in the final season of Gen3.
“People don’t want to let you pass because you’ve got two minutes. But I was ok with that. I knew the others had taken six and four, and my energy was much higher,” said Rowland.
“In the 300kW (group phase), I think I did a really good lap in qualifying and was second in my group. In 350Kw I was miles off,” he added.
This had its roots in Rowland and the Nissan team not being able to readily get enough knowledge of the 350kW mode in race conditions because on Saturday he had spent a chunk of it neutered by safety car and full course yellow periods.
It didn’t really hurt him too much and any heat he heaped upon on himself for a perceived lack of pace on 350kW was soon extinguished via the cool balm of the Monaco Piscine as he created just as big a splash as his brilliantly strategic second victory upon the world’s most famous racing streets.
