Winners and losers from Formula E's wet Shanghai double-header
A shock - and perhaps final - win for a Formula E veteran was the big talking point from a Shanghai weekend where the momentum in the title race shifted once again.
Here's our pick of winners and losers from the double-header in China:
Winners: Lucas Di Grassi + Lola-Yamaha Abt (18th/1st)
As optimistic a notion as Lucas di Grassi signing off his illustrious career with one last win was, could it actually happen? It felt barely credible. But somehow it did in Shanghai, and the romance of it cast a warm and fuzzy glow over the whole paddock.
The circumstances were extraordinary. It was a perfect smash-and-grab performance, one where the brilliance of di Grassi, his loyal engineer Markus Michelsberger, and the wider Lola-Yamaha Abt team went their own way with a patient, dry-set-up-calculated gamble that paid massive dividends.
This was no inherited win. This was the result of all the above factors filing perfectly into order. It ushered forth a remarkable turnaround for the exalted Lola name, which just four years ago was buried. But not quite dead.
Owner Till Bechtolsheimer should be lavished with praise for rejuvenating the Lola brand and allowing this victory to play out. It was the marque's first significant win since Rebellion won the 2012 Petit Le Mans sportscar race in a Lola LMP design. Just a few months prior to that success, the doors had closed at Lola's Huntingdon factory gates and seemingly another great British manufacturer had been lost.
"This is a big reward for everyone because when you are at the back, it's easy to be demotivated, but we are the opposite," Lola-Yamaha Abt deputy team principal, Frederic Espinos, told The Race.
"When all the [schedule] timings were changed, I heard some teams were complaining. But these guys behind me didn't complain, even though they didn't sleep much. It shows their motivation."
The way di Grassi navigated the difficult opening half of the race was sublime, though the irony of the full course yellow being triggered by team-mate Zane Maloney's broken car cannot be ignored.
It ultimately made di Grassi's task easier, as race leader Joel Eriksson lost some of his time in attack mode, although it would probably have been di Grassi's win anyway - even if Espinos was not so confident.
"Would we have won without it? I am not sure," he said. "We still had an attack mode and we were quick. I don't think they [Eriksson and Envision] believed we were that quick. Sometimes people see the blue-and-yellow car and they think we are slow. But today we were quick and we had the dry set-up."
Loser: Mitch Evans (8th/DNS)
Just four points across the weekend for Evans. When you consider Pascal Wehrlein's score of 40, this could be a defining weekend for the erstwhile title-chase points leader.
At precisely the time he didn't need technical let-downs, Evans got them - with what Jaguar team principal, Ian James, described to The Race as "a suspected DC-DC [power] failure". That spec part is then understood to have had a negative knock-on of affecting the traction battery.
"It's not dissimilar to that which we saw in Mexico on Antonio's car [da Costa]. Our understanding was that issue had been contained, so we need to now go back, let the supplier do the analysis, and work out whether it was the same failure mode or a new and interesting one," added James.
For Evans, who was strapped in and ready to start the race at that stage, it was a case of simply watching and hoping for some points-loss damage limitation.
"It could have been worse, it also could have been a lot better," Evans told The Race.
"We are still in it, but we need a flawless last four races to take it to the end. I am confident, but it's always been in the back of my mind how quickly this championship can change, for good or for bad.
"The last three races have been a reminder of that and almost none of that has been in our control.
"We can't afford any more issues like the one we had, or getting taken out. But on pure pace, we can still be there."
Winner: Pascal Wehrlein (1st/4th)
Four points scores from his four opportunities, a pole, a win, an extension of the manufacturers' lead, a reclaiming of the teams' points lead, and Wehrlein turning a 19-point deficit to Mitch Evans into a nine-point lead was exactly the kind of weekend that Porsche really needed.
Wehrlein was overall positive about his weekend, one in which he showed imperious one-lap and race pace on Saturday. The win and pole was a rare double but there was also some pragmatism from the 2023-24 champion on Sunday.
"I think we did well with what was in our hands this weekend," Wehrlein told The Race.
"We scored 40 points, which is a very strong weekend. On the other hand, with small different decisions or circumstances, we could have another pole position and another win, so I feel like we also lost 13-16 points [on Sunday].
"But if someone had offered me 40 points before the weekend I would have probably signed for it."
There was a claim to suggest that after a barren three races in Monaco and Sanya, which were punctuated by getting knocked out by team-mate Nico Mueller and then his own error at Sanya, when he drop-kicked Norman Nato out, that Saturday's Shanghai win might be Wehrlein's most crucial.
The plot twists this season are getting more fascinating by the race. Whether it be Wehrlein versus a Jaguar-leaving Evans; Wehrlein versus old nemesis Antonio Felix da Costa; or a combination of all three, the script is dripping with thrill and headlines, even with four races still to run.
Wehrlein's win is up there with his first victory in Mexico City in 2022 and the title-defining London one in 2024 in terms of significance. Now, you just get the feeling there might be another one coming along in Tokyo or London, or potentially both.
Loser: Nissan (13th/8th & 20th/17th)
Oliver Rowland largely matched title rival Evans with a difficult Shanghai weekend, one that produced just one more point than the Kiwi - with his eighth-place finish on Sunday backed up by a fastest lap point that provided his only consolation.
Norman Nato's Saturday was horribly spoiled by the complete injustice of him being further penalised for an accident not of his making at Sanya. His multiple penalties for component changes above and beyond the regulated allowance ensured he had to make a stop/go pitstop and he was never going to feature strongly.
Nissan, and specifically with Rowland, had a vice-versa type weekend as it went for a drier set-up on Saturday - only for the rain to neutralise Rowland's charge to fifth place as he spiralled down the order to 13th.
The reverse happened on Sunday as it went for a wetter set-up and got caught out by the rapidly drying circuit.
"We were expecting a full wet race, and we were surprised by seeing how fast the track was drying up," Nissan team principal Tommaso Volpe told The Race.
"Maybe we need to look at the data as obviously, it's always very easy to give a judgement like this. Maybe we didn't react properly during the race, but we don't know."
Rowland at least salvaged some points and was actually rapid at stages despite a scrape with da Costa, as the two cars clashed briefly.
Ultimately, the poor performances and paltry points totals had to be digested, as Nato never featured and came home 17th - meaning he now has 98 points fewer than his team-mate Rowland.
"The only positive is that on the drivers' championship side we didn't lose that much," was Volpe's summary.
"Oliver is still in a position to attack and win the championship, whilst on the team side, obviously the situation is totally not what we were expecting at the beginning of the season, and we need to reset our targets."
Winner: Envision (7th/3rd & 17th/5th)
A real tale of two halves for 'the greens' - which didn’t feature massively on Saturday, but then fought back with an inspired strategy on Sunday as Eriksson went from 18th to third and Sebastien Buemi pushed forward to the front and an eventual fifth.
Eriksson, on his first visit to Shanghai, took a solid seventh in race one and then hit the headlines with a barnstorming run to lead in race two, eventually taking his maiden Formula E podium.
Some consider the affable Swede to be the revelation of the season. The truth really is that Envision, via a positive push from Jaguar, for which Eriksson was a development and reserve for several seasons, has believed in him greatly since the start of the campaign.
He's so far delivered on that trust with a decent amount of points. And in Shanghai he looked nailed on for the win until the full course yellow was deployed for Maloney's crocked Lola. Did that cost him?
"The tyres never really came alive when we went green again," Eriksson told The Race.
"It was building up nicely until the FCY. I had a bit in the pocket and still had an attack mode. If it had stayed green I think we could have probably kept it [the lead] until the chequered flag, as we could have just waited to take the attack until the end. I am a bit gutted, but then again we came from near the back of the grid to score my first podium in Envision's home race."
For Buemi, who drove a stellar race from 16th on the grid, there was understandable disappointment as he believed is "great pace" went unrewarded.
"The only problem was that I was too high on tyre pressures," he said.
"We did not expect the track to dry that much.
"We split our strategies with Joel; he had the better strategy in terms of tyre pressure and it paid off very much. Ultimately it's annoying because I feel like I had great pace, but still we scored some decent points for the team."
Loser: Mahindra (5th/18th & 15th/16th)
The Mahindras clearly worked less well at Shanghai than at most other tracks so far this season, despite a strong Saturday performance from Mortara (that ultimately went unrewarded) and fifth-place finish for teammate Nyck de Vries.
Mortara, who openly states that it was never expected that he or Mahindra could fight for a title this season, is now out of any serious contention to disprove that assumption. He is now 38 points off Wehrlein - a gap that feels far too big to claw back, despite Tokyo and London looking like favourable tracks for the Mahindra M12Electro.
Poor luck did for Mortara on Saturday when a rousing run from 17th on the grid to being in contention for a podium ended up counting for nothing with the hard and brutal deployment of the safety car board, which slightly contentiously arrived as an incoming shower approached the circuit.
"The explanation is simple," Mortara, who was eventually classified 15th after losing a point for 10th at the chequered flag for a clash with Vergne, told The Race.
"We had the safety car at the worst point for our strategy.
"These things also need to go in the right way if you want to score points in Formula E. Unfortunately, today the race director put out the safety car at the worst time, and it compromised our race."
On that faint title hope, Mortara was effusive, saying: "The championship was never a goal for us this year.
"The goal is more to score points and be competitive in every race weekend. If we can find more pace in the next rounds, maybe we can be back also in the championship."
Sunday's race was absolutely abject, with De Vries and Mortara never featuring as they struggled with their set-ups and getting the tyres into any kind of competitive window.
The end result was that Mahindra slipped behind Andretti to fourth in the teams' standings and now has Envision as a genuine rival for that position going in to the last two events.
Winner: Jean-Eric Vergne (6th/2nd)
Vergne has appeared a bit of a shadow of his former self this season and has clearly had challenges to deal with - some seen, others not - not least of which has been moving across from DS Penske to Citroën.
But despite a clear lack of out-and-out race pace in terms of efficiency in the majority of races this season, Vergne has taken seven points-scoring finishes from 12 attempts. It's just that pretty much all of those have been in the lower reaches of the top 10.
Not on Sunday in Shanghai, though. Vergne's dry set-up decision enabled him to fight for the win, although he was ultimately a sitting duck for the charging di Grassi at the end.
"I'm actually very happy to be very frustrated with P2," said Vergne, celebrating his first podium position since the corresponding event in China last July.
"But, considering the season, having a podium here is fantastic, especially considering where we started [18th]."
Vergne seriously considered pitting to take different-pressured tyres after the safety car start but elected to plug away, and as the track dried his pace improved.
"Both Lucas and I were talking on the grid, saying, 'Let's try and put the dry pressures' [on]. Actually, I couldn't follow the safety car at the beginning, so I asked to pit for the right pressures. It's been a rough season, so having a podium is nice."
Additional reporting by Jamie Klein
