‘Giz a job!’
Anyone familiar with classic British TV drama from the 1980s will remember the unforgettable ‘Yosser’ Hughes played sublimely by the late/great Bernard Hill in Alan Bleasdale’s seminal Liverpool based political and social drama ‘Boy’s from the Black Stuff.’
The scene in which Hughes follows a football pitch groundsman, as he is laying the touchline, has become legendary in filmmaking in its comedic simplicty, matched only by its tragi-comic outreach to Thatcher’s grim ‘managed industrial and social decline’ of Liverpool in the mid-1980s.
It was tempting to think of that scene yesterday as Dan Ticktum followed his own lines around the Tokyo EPrix circuit on his slow down lap, with a cacophony of cheering in his radio, and his team joyfully sharing the moment of his second EPrix win after a dramatic last lap move on erstwhile leader Jake Dennis, after the Andretti suffered the slightest of miscalculations on his energy usage in comparison to Ticktum who had saved sufficiently.
Then came THAT line from Ticktum.
“Can I have a job now please” he said, channeling his inner Yosser Hughes
Clearly that related to what is believed to have been an internal decision, mostly already agreed upon that the team will at the very least seriously consider replacing Ticktum for the Gen4 period.
The smart money is on reigning DTM champion Ayhancan Guven filling the role. An unproven, in Formula E terms at least, prospect. But one that comes with Gen4 testing via the Porsche development car and the hearty push of CUPRA Kiro’s manufacturer mothership, Porsche.
Details of if and when that may play out are for another time. For now, there should be savouring of Ticktum’s win because it was a great one.
“From a team side and a Dan side, it was super under control,” remarked CUPRA Kiro team principal, Russell O’Hagan to FEN late on Saturday night.
“We were very clear on our expectations, even at the point where Jake’s likely to come past after his attack mode and Cassidy’s going to be there and thereabouts, and just trying to keep the big picture in mind.
“But Dan was super calm. Mike (Henderson), his race engineer was super calm. It just proved by doing all those things right and being consistent, and hen sometimes the last little bit of opportunity comes to you.
“Dan was there in a perfect position and we knew the energy profile on the last lap coming into T16 was going to be tight as well, so we were a little bit stressed that we came across the line and if we were going to be okay on energy.
“There’s a huge amount of pride for us because we’ve been saying all year we’re starting to reach a new level of potential, and that’s the first time where that’s kind of just flooded out of us and been a well-executed race for the team.”
The foundations of the win were laid down in the week prior to the Tokyo win when Ticktum completed his usual simulator day at the Weissach facility in Germany before the team held a pre-event meeting on the Monday before the race.
“It was just super conscious, even from the pre-event meeting we had on Monday of how we thought the race would go,” confirmed O’Hagan.
There, knowing that you need to kind of box opposite, and make hay in the pit window, we’ve also been more conscious of when we are strong or not in the race with tyre temperatures, where our traction is at different points in the race.
“Combining that with the attack mode at the right time, like just every little thing we’ve learned and optimized over the last half of the season, just all came together.”
On the issue of whether or not Ticktum will have a job at the team next year, there was no defined news, but it is being discussed in the ‘gossipy corners’ of the paddock that Ticktum must look elsewhere for 2027. But where?
Some teams are locked for next season, certainly. But some are very fluid. Or could there be a last minute reprieve and about turn by CUPRA Kiro for the driver who has delivered their two EPrix wins.
Of course, with it has come epic drama, of which would make even the great Alan Bleasdale blush. Because as scripts go, this one has everything, including, quite possibly, a compelling finale and potential sequel.
