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analysis stagione 11

Mahindra's Mortara and Davies on top after Monaco in ABB Engineered to Outrun

Analisi 08 mag 2025 4 Min

Contrasting weather conditions and two very different races threw up two winners of the ABB Engineered To Outrun Award at the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship’s first ever Monaco double-header.

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analysis stagione 11

^{Words: Scott Mitchell, @ScottMitchellF1}

Nico Mueller and Bertrand Fermine took ABB honours in Saturday’s E-Prix - although it could have been even sweeter as their perfect strategic work could have been rewarded with victory - before it went the way of Nick Cassidy and Geoff Lenfant on Sunday as Cassidy moved from 14th to the podium.

Both pairings have been at the forefront of the ABB Engineered To Outrun leaderboard this season with Mueller/Fermine joint top of the standings and Cassidy/Lenfant just one position behind.

And different strategic masterstrokes from the same starting position of 14th were behind their respective charges in Monaco.

Bittersweet for Mueller

Mueller’s latest victory in the Engineered to Outrun award should have been accompanied by an unlikely race win, too, after an opportunistic, sharp strategic choice from Andretti seemed to be turning despair into triumph.

An early puncture dropped Mueller to the back of the field, but Bertrand Fermine instructed him to make his PIT BOOST pit stop during a timely virtual safety car that meant he was stationary in his box charging the battery while the rest of the field were moving at reduced speed on-track.

Mueller said this call was made “consciously and quickly” and was “perfectly read”. It also transformed his race - launching him into the race lead by the time the rest had completed their mandatory PIT BOOST stops.

Unfortunately for Mueller, an unusual issue prevented him from then disappearing down the road. What Andretti team boss Roger Griffiths called a “miscommunication with the charger” meant it “didn’t function as intended” during Mueller’s stop, though in contingency and by design energy was released from the battery's buffer to compensate.

This meant that while Mueller virtually had extra energy by virtue of serving his stop, and had saved his full eight-minute ATTACK MODE allowance until the end, the actual usable energy in the physical battery was still depleted. And so from the lead, he had to run a more energy-saving race to the finish instead of potentially pulling clear.

While this cost Mueller victory, he was able to manage his energy effectively to secure a strong result. And there was some good teamwork to be done at the same time, as Mueller kept the chasing pack at bay to allow team-mate Jake Dennis to pull a big gap and score a podium finish despite having a time penalty added after the race.

“I could not use all the energy that was available otherwise I would have ran out of physical battery charge,” said Mueller, who was beaten to the line on the final lap by Edoardo Mortara but still finished fifth.

“So a very bittersweet ending.”

Cassidy’s podium charge

A wet race two in Monaco guaranteed a different kind of E-Prix, for which Cassidy lined up only 14th. With no PIT BOOST in this race, an early virtual safety car for a Lucas di Grassi shunt afforded no kind of conventional strategic opportunism. But Cassidy and Jaguar were offset to the frontrunners in a different way.

Cassidy ran in the midfield early on and did well to stay in the mix in 12th saving more energy and as the vast majority of the cars ahead - and some behind - used ATTACK MODE for the first time.

Activating ATTACK MODE to get four-wheel drive carried an added premium in the slippery wet conditions, but Cassidy opted to keep that in reserve until later on, which would prove decisive. He saved his first activation for a few laps and then only used two minutes - which was enough to jump him three places to eighth and still give him six minutes left for later on, more than any other driver.

A full safety car at mid-distance was a useful factor in Cassidy’s favour as it bunched the field back up, giving him the chance to use his circa 2.5% energy surplus over the grid median and extra remaining ATTACK MODE to attack others more quickly rather than burn it up making up bigger gaps between cars.

He moved ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne in normal conditions and armed himself with six minutes of ATTACK MODE with eight laps remaining, as late as he dared to use it before the end of the race.

That began his charge to the podium as he first moved from seventh to fifth and latched onto the group fighting for second. Nipping past Jean-Eric Vernge for fourth gave Cassidy a minute of ATTACK MODE to clear Nyck de Vries, and he decided not to give the famously robust Mahindra driver a chance to disrupt his momentum.

Cassidy committed immediately to a move that took him right up against the wall on the inside down to the Mirabeau right-hander, past De Vries and into third - which he held to the end.