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Barnard's first Formula E win 'not far away' at all now
Taylor Barnard says his first Formula E win is coming after a career best weekend in Jeddah.
NEOM McLaren's full-season rookie finished third in Friday’s race before adding a pole position and a second place on Saturday to come away from Saudi Arabia second in the points.
It’s been a stellar start to the season for the 20-year-old, who graduated to a full-time seat after three appearances as a stand-in for Sam Bird last season, with three podiums from four starts. Now only a victory is missing from his resume.
“It's not far away,” he insisted. “I think I'm just collecting all of the colors at the moment, but that's definitely my target. When the car can do it, I'll definitely do my best. The focus for myself at the moment is just to keep scoring these big points. It's important for myself and for the team, and it will come.”
While only championship leader Oliver Rowland has matched Barnard's podium haul this season – the Nissan driver having two wins, a second and a 14th, like Barnard – he didn’t expect to come away from Jeddah in such a strong position.
“Coming into this weekend, I didn't expect to take home three trophies and a lot of points,” he said. “I couldn't have asked for much better. The team have done a great job, given me a great car and I've managed to execute.”
While Maximilian Guenther managed to convert pole into a win on Friday, Saturday’s race presented a different challenge, with no Pit Boost and more energy saving. With that change, Barnard says that repeating Guenther’s feat was a tough ask.
“Today was such a different race compared to yesterday,” he said. “We have to recover and regenerate 10 percent more energy than yesterday, so I knew to keep the lead for the whole race was going to be almost impossible.
“At some point I had to drop back and try and recover the energy compared to everyone else. I could do it, just ... just hold on to second. Starting from pole and finishing second, I’m super happy.”
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
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