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Cassidy wins on strategy in London E-Prix race 1
Nick Cassidy used a pit undercut and late double dose of Attack Mode to perfection to win the first race of the London E-Prix.
The Jaguar TCS Racing driver started from fifth on the grid and held station in a largely processional run before the pit stop cycle. He was the first of the lead group to pit on lap 17, while top three trio Nyck de Vries, Pascal Wehrlein and Cassidy's teammate Mitch Evans led the way.
While Mahindra driver de Vries maintained his lead through the pit cycle – having built a gap by using both of his Attack Modes beforehand – Cassidy crucially hadn't used any of his. He took his first at the start of lap 28 and breezed past de Vries on the start-finish straight, then used his second to consolidate that lead.
De Vries held on for second, with Tag Heuer Porsche man Wehrlein third after a relatively quiet run, while Maserati MSG’s Stoffel Vandoorne finished fourth, ahead DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne and Edoardo Mortara in the second Mahindra.
Mortara survived a lap one collision at Turn 9 with Maximilian Guenther – who’d come together with Jake Hughes two turns earlier – which resulted in the DS Penske driver retiring with broken front left suspension. Guenther kept going but struggled to turn in at Turn 19, resulting in a pileup that collected the NEOM McLarens of Sam Bird and Taylor Barnard as well as Zane Maloney and brought out the first of two safety car periods.
Robin Frijns was seventh, with Jake Dennis classified eighth after initially finishing fifth. He was handed a five-second time penalty for a collision with Oliver Rowland at Turn 5.
Norman Nato and Evans completed the points scorers. Evans, the early race leader from pole, fell out of the lead when he left his first Attack Mode after both de Vries and Wehrlein, and then dropped out of podium contention entirely on lap 30 when a move from Dan Ticktum on Jake Dennis into Turn 19 resulted in Ticktum tagging the back of Evans, sending him into a spin. The incident earned Ticktum a five-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race and a penalty point of his license.
Two laps later, Ticktum caused the second safety car after locking up while attempting to pass Sam Bird at Turn 9 and going into the wall. Bird took his second Attack Mode at the end of that lap, seconds before the safety car was deployed, robbing him of a chance to use the additional power and four-wheel-drive.
After being involved in the lap one coming together with Guenther, Bird over-consumed in his quest to recover – and was as high as fifth before the safety car – but that proved to be his undoing. He ran out of energy before the race finished and suffered a late-race puncture to add insult to injury, ending his day in the pit lane.
Lucas di Grassi was the last of the finishers, but received two penalties – a five second one for crossing the white line on pit exit, then a 10 second one for failing to complete his Attack Mode use before the end of the race.
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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