Confusion, Indignation, and a Stealth Challenger: Puebla E-Prix Digested
(copyright FIA Formula E)
The jubilation of a first win on the road for the likeable Edoardo Mortara and his stalwart Venturi team is a great story from the Puebla E-Prix, but it would be burying the lede to suggest it were the main one. There are times and places when the insatiable desire for information rubs up against the marketer’s wish to “control the message”, and Puebla gave us another example of this in a Formula E season studded with them.
What happened?
The basics of the situation are that Pascal Wehrlein dominated the first race from lights to flag, demonstrating in the clearest way since joining Formula E in 2019 quite how much of a unique talent the German-Mauritian is. It was known for much of the race - and, likely, before the race, that his Porsche team were under investigation for a technical infraction, along with both Nissan edams cars.
That infraction was, it turned out, failing to declare the tyres to be used for the race on Saturday. With only six sets of tyres being allowed per race meeting, the purpose of declaration is to make sure no team uses their limited sets in an irregular way in order to gain an advantage.
There we get to the problem - it is an offence that currently is cause for disqualification. Wehrlein was not at fault, and it was likely a member of staff at Porsche, attempting to multitask and letting their attention-to-detail waver for a moment. To the technical expert, or the individual deeply embedded in Formula E’s minutiae, it was an open-and-shut case. To those watching at home, the punishment just didn’t fit the crime.
Wehrlein leads the field (copyright FIA Formula E)
In the past, Formula E’s approach to controversy has been (likely quite sensibly most of the time) to explain but not usually apologise. That communications strategy has had to be amended this year, with a series of different setbacks (already covered to death in previous articles), all linked by communication reaching the participants, but being withheld from viewers.
With the Valencia battery issue, it was difficult to see how it could have been discussed earlier with viewers, given that nobody knew how many Safety Car deployments there would eventually be. When cars started running out of usable energy, though, the commentary and trackside team tried their best to communicate the reasons why this had happened to a dumbfounded audience.
The same thing happened again with Wehrlein’s investigation. Insiders told The Race’s journalist Sam Smith that being under investigation for a “technical infraction” normally means something has occurred so serious it is almost not worth continuing, as disqualification would inevitably follow. However, viewers were given the impression it was something being discussed, and that Wehrlein might still take the win. That the disqualification came as he took the chequered flag was, unlike the Valencia incident, an avoidable PR catastrophe.
Nissan were penalised along with Porsche (copyright FIA Formula E)
The positive sign is that Formula E seems to have woken up to the fact that it may be applying its rules completely fairly, and competitors agree to respect those rules, but that expecting an audience of fairweather fans tuning in for a bit of evening entertainment to absorb this based on thirty seconds of explanation might not be realistic.
Alejandro Agag, Formula E’s founder and the Chairman of Formula E Operations, had handed over day-to-day running of the category in order to focus on growing Extreme E. He returned to interview duties in Puebla, and his show of contrition, along with a blunt apology and a promise to look again at how information was dispensed, was a sign of a change of strategy at the top.
Somehow, seeing Agag back was like an uncle telling you everything was going to be fine. He’s not returning to full-time CEO duties, as far as anyone is aware, and yet his reassuring and perfectionist presence at trackside will help salve the concerns of some participants and investors as Formula E seeks buy-in from a number of holdouts for the forthcoming Gen3 rules era.
As for that gap between journalists, hardcore fans, and occasional viewers: motorsport will always have that problem. Football is beginning to experience the problem of needing to delve into the well of technical jargon thanks to its real-time experiment with VAR. Formula One arguably goes too far in that direction, deterring potential fans with endless discussion about protested brake ducts or front wings. Formula E could borrow a little from that playbook, all the same.
Expecting an in-race commentary team to interpret the FIA’s rulebook at the same time as calling a 45-minute race is an impossibility. The same applies with pitlane interviewers. Maybe the time has come for a studio set, with a touchscreen and expert pundits, where those who want to understand the many possible rule infractions can do so prior to a race?
Slickly packaging motorsport, which is like a complex gadget with all its annoyingly sharp edges and the requirement for an instruction book, has always been a tough challenge. Maybe the best thing Formula E can learn from this weekend is not to keep its audience in the dark, even if that means occasionally getting techie and throwing a few jargon explainers the viewer’s way.
Other key moments in race one
Wehrlein might have been the main story from that first race, but other excitement was to be found with the Attack Mode zone, situated on a piece of the usual race circuit where the Formula E circuit deviates. It was a faster corner than the corner cars would conventionally take, meaning cars entering with the extra boost of Attack Mode were also carrying naturally more momentum.
The opposite of a motorway slip-road, this entry point was more like a rallycross fork, and saw to the races of, among others, Jean-Eric Vergne and Sam Bird, in both cases the drivers being sent into the wall by rivals with Attack Mode.
Sometimes Formula E adds jeopardy and it contributes to the excitement and fun - DS Techeetah and Jaguar will not agree, but the Attack Mode zone was an extra thrill in a championship which ordinarily specialises in them. Vergne, on the other hand, was clear of his views, telling Motorsport.com, “I hope we are never ever coming back to this track.”
Rast times
The driver who is making quiet brilliance his trademark is Rene Rast. On a day when his teammate, Lucas di Grassi, took the justifiable plaudits for winning, Rast was right behind. The Audis had started eighth and ninth, so for them to finish 1-2 was a demonstration of how Audi’s decision to replace Daniel Abt last season with a salty old pro like DTM champion Rast has added to the tactical capabilities of the team.
Di Grassi’s extraordinary racecraft has been known by Formula E since he arrived in the championship for the first race in Beijing in 2014; Rast has caught him up in just under a calendar year, through being a sponge for technical data, working well with his engineers, and not allowing himself to get dragged into intra-team politics. Both drivers ought to be on a few teams’ shopping lists when Audi leaves the sport at the end of the season.
Behind the Audi drivers were Mortara, Alexander Sims, whose car survived intact the Attack-Mode impact, and Jake Dennis, who has dispelled the doubters (including this author) to be at least a match for his BMW i.Andretti teammate Maximilian Günther on unfamiliar circuits.
Race two
Rowland leads away from Mortara (copyright FIA Formula E)
Mortara qualified third and continued his competitive weekend, but Venturi were becoming known for starting well and, for various reasons, being unable to consolidate their grid position at the end of a race. In front of the Swiss were Wehrlein, who had looked all day like a bulldog chewing a wasp, and polesitter Oliver Rowland. It seemed a reasonable bet one of them would make up for the previous day’s disqualification, which had affected both Porsche and Nissan teams.
Rowland pulled out a lead of over a second in the early laps, presumably having been told by his team to push early on to lessen the negative impact of that Attack Mode zone. He also engaged the extra power, taking both his mandatory activations within the first 12 minutes of racing in an interesting use of strategy.
At the tail of the field it was a bad day, again, for the pre-season title favourites Mercedes, Stoffel Vandoorne struggling in 13th having scraped into the points the previous day, while Nyck de Vries was forced out with damage. With 26 minutes remaining Nick Cassidy, in his most impressive race since joining Envision Virgin, took third having engaged no Attack Mode at the time; it was assumed he would drop back later.
Dennis held 6th (which was later to become 5th) from Lynn, while Wehrlein chased down Mortara at the front. The Porsche driver was to be given a time penalty post-race for incorrect use of FanBoost - he engaged it when his battery was too low on instruction from his team - but this time he at least took points for fourth, though capping an awful weekend for the Porsche team, with Andre Lotterer down in 17th.
Mortara celebrates his win (copyright FIA Formula E)
It wasn’t easy for Mortara at the front, but he made it look like it was - Venturi have not always been the sharpest on energy management, but this time, with the driver seemingly making some of his own calls mid-race, Mortara pushed as much as his energy usage would allow, keeping Wehrlein at arm’s length. The Porsche was sporadically the faster car around Puebla, but Mortara made it over the line, hitting 0.0% battery just as he did so, and becoming championship leader almost by stealth, and by ten points - not a margin to be sneezed at in a title race that usually goes to the wire.