Words: Scott Mitchell-Malm, @SMitchellF1
Big drives into the points from the final spot of the grid from Edoardo Mortara, with engineer Tom Davis, and Stoffel Vandoorne, alongside engineer Thibault Arnal, in the inaugural Jeddah E-Prix race weekend mean that the ABB award has gone to the driver who lined up last in all four races so far this season. But no story has yet been the same.
In Saudi Arabia, the debut of PIT BOOST was a new mid-race variable to consider in the first part of the double-header. Although for Mortara, a big path was cleared for him on a dramatic opening lap with various incidents and problems befalling other drivers.
The Mahindra Racing driver navigated the mess expertly to jump to 13th after just one racing lap, but he was hardly done there. There were 144 overtakes during the race and Mortara was responsible for a race-high 18 of them on his way to seventh.
He was up to 11th, rising two more places when Jaguar TCS Racing's Mitch Evans and the Nissan of Norman Nato pit, by the time the PIT BOOST strategies became a factor then jumped CUPRA KIRO driver Dan Tickum with a much smoother stop. But whereas Jake Hughes (Maserati MSG Racing), Taylor Barnard (NEOM McLaren) and Porsche's Antonio Felix da Costa all went into ATTACK MODE immediately after pitting, Mortara saved that first deployment for a little later.
He was the last driver in the top 15 to do it – waiting until lap 20 – and then began a steady rise. He passed Jaguar's Nick Cassidy and Vandoorne on the same lap to move into the top 10 for the first time, then moved ahead of Sebastien Buemi on the start-finish straight after the Envision Racing driver’s own ATTACK MODE expired and cleared Jake Dennis (Andretti) at the end of the lap.
A bold move on da Costa followed, and with the last few seconds of ATTACK MODE remaining Mortara just managed to scramble by Jean-Eric Vergne in the DS PENSKE, for good measure. From 11th to sixth in barely three laps, Mortara had transformed his race.
Inevitably it came at a cost – 1.1% worse off on energy than the grid median. But in a tight race on energy, everyone was in a similar position.
So, although Mortara actually carried a small energy deficit to the median for the remainder of the race, he wasn’t about to sink like a stone. He actually got up to fifth at one stage after going early on his second ATTACK MODE! That couldn’t quite be sustained as Mortara did drop to seventh by the flag, but that did not detract from a strategically very well-run race overall.
Vandoorne's surge
Vandoorne - starting from the back after his qualifying disqualification - had a noticeably more cautious, energy-saving start in race two than Mortara had in the first encounter although he still picked the even more careful Zane Maloney into Turn 1. And a prime T-bone from Round 3 winner Maximilian Guenther on da Costa gifted Vandoorne two more places.
He settled into a gentle few laps from there, with the lift and coast effort obvious from a top speed so much lower than most others – Vandoorne didn’t clear 200km/h three laps in a row, whereas the average was well in excess of that.
His reward was using 0.3 or 0.4% less battery a lap than others were early on. By one-third distance Vandoorne was on a par with the Porsche-powered Andrettis of Dennis and Mueller either side of him but, much more importantly, up to 4% better off than several cars higher up the order.
With ATTACK MODE proving so effective, timing the deployment correctly and having enough energy to maximise it were always going to key.
Vandoorne managed this very well. There were a massive 305 overtakes in this race and Vandoorne ‘only’ had 19. This number can be inflated for individual drivers based on how much they cycle up and down the order but Vandoorne was generally very efficient with when he decided to attack – those 19 competitive overtakes turned into 16 positions actually gained over the course of the race.
His progress was defined by two surges up the order and he was assisted by the ATTACK MODE power boost and all-wheel-drive in both. The first took him closer to the points: Vandoorne used ATTACK MODE before the two Andrettis and quickly jumped both of them – then Sam Bird, Norman Nato, Mortara, Nyck de Vries and David Beckman, to move up to 11th. He fell back behind three of those once everybody’s first ATTACK MODE usages had shaken out, but he was still a net four places better off in 14th – and still in a much healthier position with his battery.
Energy was not super sensitive as most of those in the fight should have had enough left to push to the finish. Still, Vandoorne used his advantage to pass de Vries and Nato again in normal conditions, and it paid off more during ATTACK MODE, which drains the battery more.
Back on the edge of the points in 12th, Vandoorne then used his extra energy (between 1-3% depending on the car ahead of him) and ATTACK MODE to get up to eighth. By the final few laps, Vandoorne’s energy spend to make this progress had only taken him down to a level still slightly higher than almost everyone else.
So, instead of saving like crazy, Vandoorne was still pushing – he got ahead of Ticktum, kept clear of reigning champion Pascal Wehrlein (Porsche) even though the chasing Porsche had ATTACK MODE, and grabbed sixth at the final corner with a big lunge on Vergne to cap a great charge through the field with a flourish.
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