Da Costa Survives Vandoorne Pressure For New York Win
Calum Gill 19:23 17/08/2022
António Félix da Costa finally claimed a first win of the 2022 Formula E season for himself and DS Techeetah under heavy pressure from Stoffel Vandoorne in New York.
Vandoorne picked his way through the frontrunners to become da Costa’s biggest threat in the second half of the race. He couldn’t make it into the lead, partly due to yellow flags for crashes involving Oliver Askew, Lucas di Grassi and Jean-Éric Vergne in the final minutes, but the Mercedes driver’s second place puts him to the top of the championship standings with just four races at two double-headers to go. Mitch Evans emerged from a series of absolutely wild battles involving Nyck de Vries and Alexander Sims to take a third place that keeps his title bid in good shape, leaving him 16 points behind new leader Vandoorne.
Both Evans and de Vries lost control over a bump while trying a pass move and slewed into the run-off area in near-identical incidents, Evans on de Vries and de Vries on Sims, who he’d also tapped into a big slide at a hairpin earlier on. Fourth place for Mahindra driver Sims, passed late on by Evans, is still by far his best result of what will be his last FE season, but he had been second for much of the distance. Three-time New York winner Sam Bird drove a brilliant race from 16th (his qualifying compromised by Vergne’s group session crash ahead of him) to fifth for Jaguar, ahead of Robin Frijns. Bird’s charge included a late brush with de Vries that left the Mercedes seventh place ahead of Jake Dennis and slow-starting second-row qualifier André Lotterer, who dropped nine places off the line.
Erstwhile championship leader Edoardo Mortara brought his battle-scarred Venturi Mercedes from 21st to 10th after brake by wire problems in qualifying. He’s now 11 points behind Vandoorne. Vergne’s title bid looks a much longer shot after his qualifying crash was followed by a slow start and a race-ending late tangle with di Grassi, the zero score meaning he’s a slightly more distant fourth in the championship, 27 points from the front. Saturday winner Nick Cassidy’s second race became a non-event once he lost pole because a 30-place grid penalty (part of which was converted into an in-race drivethrough) was applied for taking an additional RESS radiator during Envision’s build of a spare car for him following yesterday’s race-ending crash. He ended up 16th.
Dragon Penske had its finest laps of the season so far as Sergio Sette Câmara and Antonio Giovinazzi ran fourth and eighth at first, but their cars again lacked race pace and began falling down the order. Giovinazzi eventually retired, Sette Câmara was the last finisher in a distant 18th.
