After a gruelling and, most certainly, entertaining qualifying session, it was Antonio Felix da Costa starting on pole. Mercedes EQ’s driver and Mercedes-AMG Petronas reserve driver, Stoffel Vandoorne, almost got a taste of pole before a tyre infringement relegated him to the back of the grid. His teammate, Nyck De Vries, starts the race from eighth after a five-place grid penalty for clashing with Oliver Rowland and Sam Bird in Rome. The championship leaders, however, found themselves starting from the back of the grid, with Sam Bird down in 21st and Mitch Evans in 18th.
Written By Hafiz Akbar, Edited By Janvi Unni
The race starts off well for the DS Techeetah driver, keeping his place in front of the pack and pulling away nicely from the grid. Soon after, Sebastien Buemi had to abandon the race due to a collision with TAG Heuer Porsche driver, Andre Lotterer. He was then slapped with a drive-thru penalty.
Just five minutes later, another DNF occurred as Max Guenther, the BMW i Andretti driver, lost control of his car and ran off into the gravel subsequently trapping him. That brought his race to an early end. The Mini Pacesetter safety car had to be brought out to assist the full-course yellow.
With fourteen minutes to the end of the race, Sergio Sette Camara was tapped by Jaguar Racing’s Kiwi driver, Mitch Evans. This caused him to spin and that trapped his car in the gravel, forcing him to retire. In the same minute, Mitch Evans also retired because of damage to the bit where he tapped Sette Camara at. This prompted the safety car to be pulled out.
In the last seven minutes, Evans and Sette Camara, along with Vandoorne and Muller, were investigated for causing a collision in separate instances. Vandoorne was slapped with a five second penalty, whilst Evans was not penalised since he’d already retired by the time the investigation took place.
Ultimately, after a long and wet race, the first one in Formula E history, Nyck De Vries went on to win the Spanish ePrix in the last lap as Da Costa ran out of juice in his battery. He didn’t just lose out the podium in the last lap but also the podium places, with Oliver Rowland and Alexander Sims finishing the race second. But since the regulations require the cars to still have some battery power after the race, some of the drivers were DSQ’ed and as such, the podium positions went to Nyck De Vries, Nico Muller, and Stoffel Vandoorne, who started from the last place in the grid.
The highlight of the race was definitely the last lap, where the drivers were running out of juice just moments before the race ended. Nyck De Vries and Stoffel Vandoorne were waiting for this moment to pounce and surge up the order and eventually get the double podium for Mercedes EQ, especially the surge by Vandoorne to get up from dead last to a podium finish is just something magical, some Sakhir-Sergio Perez-esque driving that.
With the race concluded, De Vries tops the driver standings with 57 points and Vandoorne followed closely in second with 48.
Will we see another Mercedes domination? I sure hope not.