by Linus O'Howell
A sensational last lap overtake from Sam Bird meant the Brit scored his first E-Prix victory since Season 7 whilst also handing NEOM McLaren their first-ever win in Formula E. Mitch Evans had to, unfortunately, settle for second place whilst Oliver Rowland managed to achieve an unbelievable podium for Nissan after entering the final corner in P5!
The Most Notable Moments
Pascal Wehrlein was able to get a good launch to stay ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne heading into Turn 1 before Wehrlein and Vandoorne quickly entered their first Attack Mode. This meant that NEOM McLaren’s Sam Bird had the lead, but it constantly changed with the back so bunched up.
📸 Bird in the lead.
This actually meant that quite a lot of cars made contact with one another which ultimately meant the Safety Car had to be called out due to there being too much debris on the track. Following the restart, Jake Dennis was able to gain 3 positions in about 3 corners before the reigning World Champion found himself in the lead on Lap 12, despite being P12 at the end of the first lap. We then got a big moment on Lap 16 as Nick Cassidy, who’d started his journey with Jaguar TCS Racing with 3 podihms out of 3, crashed into the wall at Turn 9 as a result of his front wing getting stuck under his car. There was literally nothing that Cassidy could do here.
When the race got back underway on Lap 20, it became a bit harder to overtake due to everyone basically pushing flat out to the end. This would particularly frustrate Wehrlein who just wasn’t able to get past Mitch Evans’ Jaguar before Evans managed to overtake Bird himself to lead with just 6 laps to go.
Towards the end, it looked like Dennis was in the best position out of the leading pack, but his Andretti was overheating too much meaning he ultimately dropped back. This meant it was a 2-way fight at the front heading onto the final lap, and somehow, Bird managed to go around the outside of his former teammate Evans into Turn 9 and 10 to take a famous victory for both himself and McLaren!
Also, behind them, Dennis and Wehrlein were fighting hard for the final spot on the rostrum, and this ultimately opened the door for Oliver Rowland to sneak by in his Nissan for his second consecutive podium finish!
📸 Two podiums already for the returning Ollie Rowland - is he championship contender at this stage?
Drivers who Impressed
There were three drivers that massively impressed me in this E-Prix and the first person is Sam Bird. Sam drove a sensational race and he fully deserved to celebrate his first E-Prix victory since New York 2021.
The second driver that really impressed me was Oliver Rowland because his P3 came out of literally nowhere so very fair play to him.
The other driver that I thought did a terrific job was Maximilian Gunther as he had to start from the back and serve a 10-second stop-and-go penalty and yet he still managed to score two points!
I also thought Mitch Evans and Jake Dennis had pretty good drives as well.
Drivers who Struggled
Norman Nato and Jake Hughes were the two drivers that impressed me the least in the 2024 Sao Paulo E-Prix. Nato was nowhere and he also whipped out Lucas di Grassi from behind which wasn’t great whilst Hughes was miles off his teammate. Also, Sergio Sette Camara didn’t have a great home race as he was disqualified afterwards.
Overall Race Results
1) Sam Bird: Winner 2) Mitch Evans: +0.564 3) Oliver Rowland: +3.540 4) Pascal Wehrlein: +3.629 5) Jake Dennis: +3.722 6) Antonio Felix da Costa: +5.567 7) Jean-Eric Vergne: +6.006 8) Stoffel Vandoorne: +6.817 9) Maximilian Gunther: +8.085 10) Sebastien Buemi: +8.610 11) Sacha Fenestraz: +9.277 12) Edoardo Mortara: +9.762 13) Lucas di Grassi: +10.819 14) Nyck de Vries: +13.677 15) Jehan Daruvala: +14.379 16) Dan Ticktum: +17.884 17) Norman Nato: +18.889 18) Robin Frijns: +19.124
DNF: Jake Hughes, Nico Muller (Issue), Nick Cassidy (Damage)
DSQ: Sergio Sette Camara
📸 Image credits: ABB FIA Formula E, McLaren NEOM.
Comments