Formula E Mexico City E-Prix: Cassidy emerges Victorious in Formula E’s 150th race

Round 2 of Formula E’s 12th season concluded last Saturday with the new Citroen driver Nick Cassidy managing to make his way up the grid from P13 with a safety car and an incident prone race. Here are the main takeaways from the race:

13 is lucky for some in the grid:

13 can be seen as an unlucky number for many people. However, for Nick Cassidy and Pepe Marti, 13 was the number of the weekend for both drivers.

For Kiwi and Citroen driver Nick Cassidy, starting P13 was a blessing in disguise as he managed to move up the grid by turn 1 as Buemi went deep into turn 1 on lap 1. He was then able to save energy by being behind drivers then make up paces after

Pepe Marti entered the weekend already on the backfoot with a back of the grid penalty due to his monster crash under the full course yellow in Sao Paulo. On top of this, he also took a new pool of components and received a 60 place grid penalty. Of course, in a grid of 20, its impossible to take all of them so he received a 10 second stop and go penalty for this which he served at the end of lap 1 and dropped way behind the pack.

However, when De Vries’ Mahindra decided to lose power at turn 1, he caught up to the rear of the field with more energy than others ahead of him. With the Spaniard using his skills and benefitting from others’ misfortune (most notably Cassidy, Guenther, Da Costa and Ticktum at turn 5 and 6), he managed to make up 13 places all the way up to P7 and score his maiden points in Formula E and a World Championship.

The Rise and Fall of Teams

Across both qualifying and the race in Mexico, teams both rose and fell across the course of those two sessions. The most notable were Citroen where both Cassidy and Vergne managed to make up many places up to P1 and P8 from P13 and P18 respectfully. These were the biggest gains from a single team with Rowland and Nato managed to make places up for the Nissan team to P3 and P10 from P8 and P12 respectfully. This helped move Citroen up to the top of the team standings with Nissan being P3 and tied with Porsche on 35 points.

Porsche is in that odd section of being a win and a lose for the team. Wehrlein took attack mode early to make up places early which did work but while many drivers saved their attack mode for later on with the race and then the safety car coming out, it didn’t help the German champions’ chances. Mueller was more towards the loss of the race as he outqualified Wehrlein by qualifying P5 but it wasn’t meant to be as he dropped to P9 in the final classification.

Now, towards the biggest loses of the race, Sebastian Buemi had the biggest loses of the weekend with the Envision Racing driver taking pole, leading towards turn 1 then out-braking himself and going from first to last at the first corner after he out-braked himself. A pitstop didn’t help either and with Eriksson getting a 5 second penalty due to gaining an advantage off track, the customer team of Jaguar didn’t go according to plan.

The factory team of Jaguar TCS Racing didn’t have a great weekend either with Da Costa having to retire due to the multi car collision at turns 6 and 7. The Portugese driver also missed FP2 due to a brake by wire issue so he was always on the backfoot. Evans was one of the victims falling down the pack with the Kiwi qualifying P4 but finishing P11, 0.3s behind P10. It was not what the Jaguar team needed.

Race Result

Prediction Verdict:

Prediction Verdict:
A few days before the weekend, I predicted the weekend to see how it would go.

Pole Position: Pascal Wehrlein. ❌
I was…kind of right as Wehrlein qualified P11…so 2 P1s? A stretch but wasn’t meant to be for the Porsche driver.

Race Winner: Nick Cassidy ✅
This was a shock to me! I make these for fun but I guess in an unpredictable sport such as Formula E, it can work out!

2nd Place: Mitch Evans ❌
This one was….not so good. Finishing all the way down the order didn’t help my chances of getting this prediction.

3rd Place: Jake Dennis ❌
This one didn’t work out either, with the Andretti driver finishing P3.

Up Next:

The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship arrived at the end of January in Miami at the hardrock stadium where the F1 is also hosted. The circuit layout has not been fully disclosed by Formula E yet but stay tuned to our preview and predictions to see what it will look like!