Part 2
Ironically, the race itself was relatively uneventful. Mahindra’s Bruno Senna was a first lap retirement after contact but at the front pole sitter Nicolas Prost dominated all but approximately 300 metres of the race.
The ramifications of his final corner incident with Nick Heidfeld’s Venturi are detailed on the following page but the whole spectacle jettisoned Formula E directly in to the consciousness of fans across the globe.
Somehow it seemed fitting that the driver to pick up the pieces and take victory in Beijing was Lucas di Grassi. He had been among the first to have understood and seen the potential in the championship as a whole and relevant entity.
For those leaving Beijing there wasn’t so much as relief that it had all happened but that the series had quite literally made an impact already.
‘My hug with Alejandro and Manolo right after the first race was quite an emotional moment for me,’ remembers Longo. ‘Finishing that race when we had thousands of people telling us we were absolutely crazy for having this idea and that it will never happen and that there will never be a Formula E race, was very sweet.’
The second race at Putrajaya in Malaysia was another major test for the Formula E hardware as temperatures in excess of 95 degrees and 80% humidity. Through it came Sam Bird who dominated the race for Virgin Racing, while Lucas di Grassi’s second position saw him continue to lead the standings.
At the beachside splendour of Punta del Este on the Maldonado peninsula in eastern Uruguay, Sebastien Buemi claimed his first win. Fellow Toro Rosso F1 exile Jean-Eric Vergne made a sensational debut to claim pole position and look good for the win until a suspension arm broke.
Vergne was deputising at Andretti for Franck Montagny who it transpired had failed a drug test after the Putrajaya race. The unedifying episode spelt the end of his competitive career but gave birth to another.
For Vergne it proved to be a chance to re-build his career although he was less convinced at the time.
‘I was not in a good space at all after F1,’ Vergne recalls. ‘I remember that Michael (Andretti) said to me if I qualified in the top ten I could do some more races. Then I get pole and almost win it, so the deal was kind of done after that and I completed the season.’
The second leg of a South American double-header took place at the elegant Puerto Madero track in Buenos Aires in the first week of 2015. It witnessed Antonio Felix da Costa taking a memorable win for the Amlin Aguri squad.
The Argentinian weekend also saw a tense moment when a group of irate ‘local characters’ threatened to disrupt the race. Agag personally negotiated with the unhappy group and peace was restored just before track activity commenced.
The race was also punctuated by a series of worrying suspension failures on the bumpy city track that accounted for Lucas di Grassi and Karun Chandhok among others.
SRT was then forced to ‘beef up’ the suspension and introduced new rear pushrods and front wishbones for the next round in Miami race which saw Nicolas Prost put the ghost of his Beijing nightmare to bed.
Miami was far from an easy race for Formula E and the event even came close to major disruption after seven barrier blocks failed to show up via operational contractor Andretti Sports Marketing.
Long Beach, a staple of the CART and Indycar schedules for over thirty years hosted the fifth round and provided one of the great feelgood stories of the season. Nelson Piquet Jnr took the chequered flag almost 35 years to the day after his famous triple F1 World Championship winning father had taken the US West Grand Prix at the same venue.
‘No one gave us a chance at the start of the season and in Beijing the team was a shambles,” remembers the Brazilian, who even had an exact replica of his father’s famous red and white helmet for the occasion.
‘But after just a few races we were there and winning. To do it in Long Beach where my Dad took his first win was very, very special.’
The four race European leg which rounded out the season began at Monaco where Buemi became the first multiple Formula E winner. On a shortened circuit in the principality, which by-passed the Saint Devote to the tunnel part of the track, Buemi dominated as a proportion of the midfield eliminated themselves in a lap one melee.
The next round, held at the moribund historic Tempelhof airport in Berlin, saw the first of several contentious disqualifications in Formula E history as Lucas di Grassi’s on the road victory was scratched off for the offence of modifying the spec front-wing bolts by his Audi Sport Schaeffler ABT team.
This handed victory to Jerome d’Ambrosio and Dragon Racing, while Nelson Piquet headed the points table for the first time.
The hastily arranged Moscow EPrix was one of the challenges of the first season for Formula E Operations and local promoters to pull off but the event was deemed a success mostly due to the remarkable backdrop of the Kremlin and Red Square. It set a trend for future Formula E races to visually stimulate TV viewers in to showcasing the ‘cool cars in cool cities’ feel of the championship.
Jean-Eric Vergne took his third pole in six races but was again unable to convert it in to a race win. Nelson Piquet Jnr capitalised to extend his points advantage to 17 as the deciding race weekend at Battersea Park approached.
The first ever all-electric motor race to take place in the British capital was held at the end of June by the banks of the River Thames. A genteel garden party atmosphere greeted the teams for the double-header event which was the first ‘double bubble’ race weekend to be staged.
The race did not go off without issues. A minority of residents took an instant and often unhinged dislike to proceedings, while the tight and bumpy confines of the historic parks’ ‘carriageways’ were less than ideal for racing or overtaking on.
A sizeable bump, which Venturi’s Stephane Sarrazin described as like ‘racing on a black run at Kitzbuhl’ had to be smoothed out between practice sessions on Saturday morning when it contributed to a suspension arm breaking on Jerome d’Ambrosio’s Dragon Racing car.
The FIA and Formula E jointly elected to move the barriers to alter the trajectory of the cars at the first turns and avoid the bumps. While this worked it also narrowed the track too severely and instead a grinding machine was deployed to smooth the surface to an acceptable degree.
Whatever the conditions, Nelson Piquet Jnr took a dramatic title triumph but did it the hard way after being compromised in qualifying when a rain shower confined him to 16th on the starting grid for race one.
But the Brazilian drove a fine race to take fifth position but saw his points lead eradicated by Sebastien Buemi. His haul of 28-points for pole and a crushing win saw him hold the title advantage heading in to the final round.
Piquet Jnr sealed the deal in the second race with seventh place but the thrilling finale went right down to the last lap of the last race of the season.
In a delicious twist Buemi had to try and find a way passed Bruno Senna’s fourth placed Mahindra to get the requisite points for title glory. Despite some hair-raising efforts he was unable to do it.
Ultimately, a Senna helped a Piquet to confirm a title, something which would never have happened a generation previously.
Battersea Park was an evocative and fitting finale to proceedings but had several surreal moments, non-more so than future UK Prime Minister and then London Major, Boris Johnson, somehow being shoehorned in to a Formula E demo car to complete the slowest and most erratic lap in the series history.
