Rome E-Prix 2023: Evans and Dennis Command in the Carnage
(Sam Bloxham, copyright FIA Formula E)
Race One
Since the beginning of the last generation of Formula E, Gen2, one driver has looked strongest of all on the Rome street circuit - Mitch Evans. The New Zealander is also one of the best drivers in the category when it comes to building a race strategy, and his experience showed in the EUR district.
On the first lap of the race Sebastien Buemi and Edoardo Mortara suffered accident damage - Mortara initially making it past Buemi before the Maserati driver made contact with a barrier, putting him down the field to 11th after a promising qualifying session. Pascal Wehrlein then stopped at the Porsche pit on the next lap, with damage from first-lap contact putting the Porsche driver and one-time championship leader to the back. Andre Lotterer was another early casualty, the Andretti driver missing another opportunity to support Jake Dennis’s title ambitions.
One driver enjoying recent technical improvements was Sacha Fenestraz, who led after the first spate of Attack Mode activations, though his joy was limited by a red flag. Sam Bird had lost control of his Jaguar on a bump, spinning and being hit by Buemi and Mortara, with Robin Frijns and Antonio Felix da Costa also sustaining damage after taking evasive action.
The incident, and the lack of yellow flags before Mortara, unsighted, went steaming into Bird’s car around a blind corner, highlighted the difficulty in ensuring safety at circuits such as Rome. The original Gen1 tracks have arguably been outgrown by the much more powerful - and much more difficult to handle - Gen3 cars. While Formula E pushes back against the idea of permanent circuits being the answer, incidents such as this will continue to occur as long as fast, tight, narrow tracks are used with Formula E’s capabilities as a championship constantly increasing.
Following the restart the frontrunners were Dennis, Evans, and the flagging Fenestraz, with Nick Cassidy making his way up to third place by lap 18. Dennis was to be frustrated by energy consumption, with Evans once again playing the strategy game to a tee. He crossed the line first, followed by Cassidy, Maximilian Günther, Dennis, Jean-Eric Vergne, and Nico Müller’s ABT-Cupra, with Wehrlein finishing a remarkable seventh after his early mishap.
Race Two
Race two was the other side of the Formula E coin to the first race - less frightening drama, but more in the way of tactical battle. Evans and his likely future Jaguar teammate Cassidy were involved in a second-lap incident that, as with the first-race crash, looked dramatic - Evans losing the car on another bump.
Meanwhile at the front, Jake Dennis had led convincingly from the start, but was starting by lap seven to come under some pressure from Norman Nato, who in this race was the faster of the Nissan drivers and was looking to take advantage of the powertrain’s usual early pace. Sam Bird, recovered from the shunt of the previous day, joined in on lap 10, providing a more sustained challenge to Dennis.
Buemi was able to leverage the excellent mid-race pace of the Jaguar package, bringing the Envision up to third on lap 14, ahead of Bird, following the triggering of Attack Mode by most of the frontrunners. Further back at the same time, Wehrlein effectively put himself out of a title race he had once seemed likely to win, pushing Lucas di Grassi’s Mahindra into the Tecpro barrier.
Bird radioed his team four laps later to ask them to request that Buemi (who races for a different team) hold up the following Maseratis, to help the British driver’s challenge of Dennis and Nato. It is rare that requests for inter-team collusion are openly broadcast, and the request was politely ignored. With the final lap coming up, Nato was lifting and coasting desperately, trying to preserve what little energy he had left, and yet somehow was able to hold off Bird for second, with Dennis winning by a comfortable margin. Dennis’s weekend puts him in command of the driver’s championship going into the final race meeting of the season in London.