The Race that Made JEV: A Punta del Este 2014 Retrospective

Jean-Eric Vergne arrived in Punta del Este a confused and tired man. He had just come off the back of what, statistically, was his best Formula One season, with a Toro Rosso that was far off the pace of more recent cars the team had produced, and having comprehensively outscored Daniil Kvyat, who made the jump to Red Bull Racing for 2015. However, it was also a season that saw Vergne dropped just a few weeks after having to register that his close friend, Jules Bianchi, had been put into a coma by the crash that would eventually claim the young Ferrari academy driver’s life.

This turbulent and upsetting period in Vergne’s life was mentioned in And We Go Green, the film of the Frenchman’s title-winning 2017-18 Formula E season. JEV, as he is now universally known, is these days considered one of the best, if not the best, racers in Formula E, and a driver who would be in the conversation for any top-10 cross-series driver comparison. We should be under no illusion, though - to get to where he always felt he should be, Vergne had to begin a long, lonely, slow climb from rock bottom to the exalted place he now occupies.

Vergne had never visited Uruguay prior to his call-up for Andretti Formula E in the third round of the inaugural Formula E Championship in December 2014. “It’s not often that you get to race at this time of the year,” he told Autoweek, and there was probably an element of being glad to be back behind the wheel of a car without the exterior anxieties created by Red Bull politics. As Sam Smith wrote for The Race, there was no escape from the main perpetrator of those politics, even on the other side of the world; Helmut Marko, the lead of the Red Bull junior programme and the man whose decision it was to axe Vergne, was in the paddock, though he did not make contact with his former driver.

Punta del Este is a beautiful location, with challenges for drivers (photo: under licence and copyright FIA Formula E)

It is often assumed that Vergne came into Andretti as a replacement for Franck Montagny, however this is only half-true. Matthew Brabham was meant to be returning to focusing on Indy Lights with Vergne slotting into his seat, but instead Montagny, who had tested positive for an active ingredient of cocaine, was banned from motorsport, meaning Vergne drove the number 27 car Montagny had driven to second place in the opening race in Beijing. If this added to the stress for Michael Andretti and his team, Vergne arrived in the coastal town, whose usually tiny population swells in summer, knowing that while eyes would be on how he performed, as an ex-Formula One driver, there were realistic expectations for him, having never driven the Spark-Renault car before first practice.

What followed was a wake-up call to the drivers and teams, many of them with experience of F1, IndyCar, WEC, and other series at the highest level. In Superpole, Vergne’s lap was 0.7s faster than Nelson Piquet’s second-fastest time, giving the debutant pole position on a track which was to garner a reputation in the coming years for being uniquely tough on tyres and suspension, due to an unholy combination of sand blowing from the adjacent beach and oppressive sausage-kerbs on the chicanes on the front and back straights. Punta del Este may be a fan-favourite, due to its high speeds, ample overtaking opportunities, and drama, but teams and drivers have a more mixed opinion of the seaside circuit, at the Monaco of the South that was, for a European, a lengthy trip.

Vergne driving for Andretti Autosport (photo: under licence and copyright FIA Formula E)

JEV Begins

Something else Vergne had not experienced before in his career were Formula E starts. The lack of a formation lap, along with the unique challenges of instant torque, made for a challenging combination for someone coming into the series fresh, and it was understandable that Vergne seemed a bit rusty off the line, losing his lead to Nelson Piquet Jr. in the Team China NextEV car. In the early laps, the track had had time since qualifying to be dirtied by more sand, and so the whole field had to make its way gingerly through the early laps. Being at the front was not necessarily an advantage, but Vergne was able to gradually reel in Piquet.

On lap four a clearly annoyed Sam Bird overcooked it into one of the chicanes and launched his Virgin into the wall after hitting a sausage kerb. For the next five laps, it was clear Vergne had more pace than Piquet, the leader causing a train behind him. This meant Vergne, who had pushed and used up energy getting close to the Brazilian, was having to hold off the two e.dams Renaults of Sebastien Buemi and Nicolas Prost.

This led to the first of what was to become familiar, as Vergne signalled an issue on his radio, partly for the benefit of his engineers, but also partly to catch the attention of Race Control. In spite of being a recipient of Fanboost in the vote (back when it counted for a lot more than it does in the Gen2 era thanks to the subsequent introduction of Attack Mode), it was not possible for him to use it to push into the lead.

Piquet forced Vergne back into the clutches of the chasing Buemi (photo: under licence and copyright FIA Formula E)

"He's so slow, I need to pass him in the straights, find the issue, please!" implored Vergne, but it was to be only another four laps before he found a way past Piquet, just two laps prior to his scheduled pit stop for the car change. His car-swap, being another new and unrehearsed art, was nothing special, and the stop overall cost Andretti time, putting the Frenchman behind Buemi and, on the road at least, Nick Heidfeld, the Venturi driver being given a penalty for pit-stop irregularities.

Brabham crashed five laps from the end, having been in a position to score points, ushering out the Safety Car. With Vergne having been harder on his car than Buemi, who was in front, this was the moment which, if all had gone right, would have saved his debut race, allowing him to coast over the line. In the end, though, a suspension failure forced Vergne out on the penultimate lap, a cruel blow for the star of the race.

It was difficult to know this at the time, but the Punta del Este E-Prix of 2014 was the formative moment which helped, perhaps more than any other that season, to show the direction in which the sport would go. Vergne may have retired from the race, and he may have been too wasteful with usable energy, too aggressive, still judging things like an F1 driver, but arguably taking pole position in his first Formula E event was the best thing he could have done for the championship. It forced the drivers and teams around him to examine their own approach, and to find something extra to counter this new threat.

More than this, it was the beginning of Vergne’s mostly very public journey from a driver left shattered and unemployed after years of hard graft to reach Formula One, whose mental health had suffered badly in a horrible 2014, to the still emotionally vulnerable, but now supreme racing driver that Formula E, and the world, knows now. It was the world’s introduction to the JEV he wanted to be, who was about to become the champion he dreamed of being.