Sunday in London a tale of two sides for Jaguar

Nick Cassidy signed off from his time with Jaguar TCS Racing in style with a dominant win in the Formula E season finale in London.

After winning on Saturday, he doubled up by converting pole position – handed to him by a grid penalty for Duels winner Dan Ticktum – into a race performance where he led every lap, then crossed the finish line 13.129s ahead of teammate Mitch Evans, who took second on the road but was later dropped to fifth after a penalty for over-speeding during a full course yellow.

“Today was probably my most dominant or biggest win in Formula E that I've had,” Said Cassidy, whose win was the second-biggest margin in Formula E history. “I could be up on energy leading the race, which around here I wasn't expecting. Even though it is a tight, small circuit, there is an advantage to be second, third. And looking at last year's races, and as an example, the race that Pascal won was really impressive from third on the grid, being up on energy and making the pace. 

“And that was kind of my fear for today, that the guys starting second third would be able to do that on me. But my car really was super, and I was able to control it quite well, so it's probably the most relaxed I've been in a racing car in a long, long time. I felt very good with it, and the race went perfectly.”

Cassidy was afforded pole not just by Ticktum’s penalty but by Evans deliberately slowing in the semifinal qualifying Duel between both Jaguars. Cassidy made a mistake in Turn 16, but in order to give him a better grid position – and a shot and three points by winning the Duels final – to aid his bid for second in the drivers’ standings, Evans backed off.

“I must say, I was surprised to have that situation in qualifying,” Cassidy said. “It wasn't spoken about before qualifying. It was only when Pascal (Wehrlein) was knocked out of the Duels that we looked at the first Duel lap times and thought pole could be possible for me.

"Actually felt very disappointed that the last two Duels laps were probably the worst Duels laps I've done in this building. I had a lot of confidence, and I just didn't drive well enough, so I felt bad for the team, considering they put me forward to try and get those three points, but tried to do my best to make it up for them in the race. 

“Mitch and I, we finished one-two on track. I was always trying to try to support him and then keep him second behind me.”

While there was jubilation on Cassidy’s side of the garage, there was frustration for Evans, who pleaded over the radio for help from his team in negating his penalty, but the help never came as Cassidy disappeared into the distance as Evans struggled to hit energy targets.

“I was trying to protect Nick and got people passing, and it was getting pretty intense, so I lost a bit of energy through that,” Evans told RACER. “After I recovered myself back into P2 I was struggling to hit targets in the second half of the race.

"Trying to get a tow off Nick didn't really happen. Obviously [with] the penalty as well, I asked for suggestions of what we can do to maybe still get ourselves a one-two in the race, but obviously [it] didn't materialize.”

One option could have been to let Evans by Cassidy, and have Cassidy back de Vries up to allow Evans to negate his five-second penalty, and still secure a one-two with Evans winning on the road but dropping to second rather than fifth, where he ended up, post race.

“I asked, I think, three or four times, but it didn't get through. So strange,” Evans said. “It seemed quite obvious from in the car ... but I'm obviously not making those calls.”

Cassidy said that, “He was definitely allowed to go past me, that was clear,” but confirmed he had no call from the team to move aside, and would have done had he been asked to.

“The big thing is that there was not a single message to me, which was a bit disappointing,” he said. “Of course, would do anything. It was pretty obvious through the race, I was doing my best to keep him in second, but I was not given any information.”

Explaining why the team didn’t opt to reverse the positions to maintain a one-two, team principal James Barclay said the team didn't want to risk damaging their championship positions by being tactical to maintain first and second.

“With Nick leading and Mitch in P2 – but with a five-second time penalty – we did consider switching the cars to minimize the impact of the penalty for Mitch,” he said. “However, swapping would have been risky and even with the penalty we were in position to achieve second in all three championships – which was our goal – so we made the call to maintain order.”