Cape Town ePrix Race Review
Da Costa shines to take his first win of the season
Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa pulled off two incredible overtakes to take victory in the inaugural Cape Town ePrix ahead of DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne and Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy.
The Most Notable Moments
Jaguar’s Sam Bird, Mahindra’s Oliver Rowland and Lucas di Grassi and ABT CUPRA’s Kelvin van der Linde and Nico Mueller were all unable to start the race meaning we got underway with just 17 cars. Rookie Sacha Fenestraz held off Maximillian Gunther at the start, but we didn’t even get through a lap before some carnage as Championship leader Pascal Wehrlein broke far too late into turn 10 and it resulted in him going straight through the back of Sebastian Buemi who was running P6 at the time. Buemi was able to continue, but the same could not be said for the Porsche driver. Edoardo Mortara then also pulled off to the side of the track and this resulted in a full-course yellow being thrown. Quite controversially, Gunther overtook Fenestraz under the full-course yellow and once we got back underway after a safety car period, Gunther led the way. Jaguar’s day then got even worse as Mitch Evans was given a drive-through penalty for overpowering and championship challenger Jake Dennis, who was slowly climbing his way up the field, was given the same penalty for under-pressuring the tyres. That’s such a silly mistake from Avalanche Andretti. After the first round of attack modes, Nick Cassidy had jumped his way into the lead ahead of Fenestraz and Gunther. With less than 10 laps to go, Max Gunther made a mistake and crash into the wall resulting in the Maserati MSG driver retiring from the race after being in a podium position. Both Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne were then able to get through the Nissan of Sacha Fenestraz and on lap 24, da Costa pulled off a terrific overtake on Nick Cassidy to take the lead of the Cape Town ePrix. Da Costa then bolted up the road whilst JEV got past the Envision driver and moved up into second place. As Antonio went through the Attack Mode activation area, he failed to activate meaning he’d lost all of his advantage to his former teammate. Da Costa did take the attack mode two laps later, but he’d now lost the lead to Jean-Eric Vergne. Behind all of this, Sebastian Buemi was making his way through the field in a really impressive recovery drive and when we went into the additional laps, Vergne lead da Costa by just half a second. On lap 31 of 32, da Costa pulled off one of the best and most scary overtakes I have ever seen in Formula E to take the lead of the Cape Town ePrix. On the final lap, Sacha Fenestraz, who was running in the podium places, crashed into the wall meaning he’d lost out on his first-ever podium whilst Antonio Felix da Costa just held off Jean-Eric Vergne to take a memorable win in Cape Town.
Drivers who Impressed
Antonio Felix da Costa started this race in 11th place and it was a pretty amazing victory. Jean-Eric Vergne also drove really well and showed a lot of respect to his former teammate whilst Nick Cassidy can be happy with his second consecutive podium. Rene Rast drove a clean race to finish in a positive 4th place whilst Sebastian Buemi’s drive to get back up into 5th place was arguably even better than da Costa’s drive. Dan Ticktum also deserves a shootout as he picked up his best-ever Formula E result as Nio 333 continue to improve.
Drivers who Struggled
Jake Hughes did pick up a point for McLaren this weekend, but he didn’t look very quick and the same definitely has to be said about Sergio Sette Camara who was nowhere in this race. Jake Dennis will be disappointed with his penalty as he missed out on taking advantage of his championship rival’s retirement. There was definitely a top 6 finish on for the Brit. Edo Mortara was out after just a lap and I don’t really know why so I can’t talk about him much, but I can talk about Pascal Wehrlein. It was a silly error by Pascal and he can’t afford to do that if he wants to end the season as a World Champion. Both Maximillian Gunther and Sacha Fenestraz made silly errors that cost them potential podiums and it will particularly hurt Fenestraz as he was having the best weekend of his career so far up until the final lap of the race. Sam Bird was unable to take part in the race due to his crash in qualifying.
Overall Race Results
Antonio Felix da Costa: 42:25.403
Jean-Eric Vergne: +0.281
Nick Cassidy: +1.808
Rene Rast: +2.208
Sebastian Buemi: +2.656
Dan Ticktum: +3.209
Stoffel Vandoorne: +4.210
Norman Nato: +8.582
Andre Lotterer: +8.755
Jake Hughes: +10.475
Mitch Evans: +14.183
Sergio Sette Camara: +14.914
Jake Dennis: +38.846
Sacha Fenestraz: DNF
Maximillian Gunther: DNF
Edoardo Mortara: DNF
Pascal Wehrlein: DNF
Drivers’ Standings:
Pascal Wehrlein: 80pts
Jake Dennis: 62pts
Jean-Eric Vergne: 50pts
Antonio Felix da Costa: 46pts
Nick Cassidy: 43pts
Teams’ Standings:
TAG Heuer Porsche: 126pts
Envision Racing: 84pts
Avalanche Andretti: 80pts
NEOM McLaren: 66pts
DS Penske: 61pts
