Stoffel Vandoorne had ‘no way to fight’ for victory after leading ‘too many laps’

Leading the vast majority of the first half of Saturday’s inaugural São Paulo E-Prix was seemingly Stoffel Vandoorne‘s biggest mistake during the sixth round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, after the reigning World Champion struggled for energy in the latter stages of the race.

Vandoorne had shown strong pace throughout the weekend in Brazil and even managed to claim his first pole position of the season, something that put him in with a shout of the win. The DS Penske driver made an excellent start to the race and led the opening stages; however, this turned out to be the wrong strategy. The Belgian driver burned up too much energy whilst leading the race, with those behind having been able to preserve their energy thanks to the slipstream Vandoorne was giving off.

As a result, he ultimately tumbled down the order to sixth, in what soon became a race of damage limitation. It was a really disappointing way for the race to go for Vandoorne, given how badly he needs some huge points in a bid to put up any sort of a title defence. To summarise his challenging season so far, his sixth place finish in Brazil was his best result this season. The three points for pole position and the points awarded for finishing sixth did see Vandoorne rise to eleventh in the standings; alas sixty-four points behind Pascal Wehrlein.

Vandoorne was “a bit disappointed” after the race given how strong his pace was; however, he openly admits that he “spent too many laps leading the race”.

“I‘m obviously a bit disappointed with the end result of P6 having started from pole. We knew before coming here that leading the race is not actually a good thing around this circuit, because it’s so energy sensitive and the drivers following behind benefit so massively from the slipstream. That’s kind of what happened.  We spent too many laps leading the race, and at some point our energy deficit compared to the others was just too much, and we had no way to fight with them anymore.

“Tough one. On another note, the positive thing was that the qualifying was very good. It’s my first pole with the team and my first one in Gen3, so I’m happy with that. We’ll try and carry that forward now and hopefully improve in the races too.”

“My car was quite undriveable” – Jean-Éric Vergne

It wasn’t just Vandoorne who struggled at DS Penske, as team-mate Jean-Éric Vergne also found the going tough during the race. The Frenchman struggled in qualifying and could only manage ninth; however, he started seventh following grid penalties to multiple drivers in-front of him.

The double Formula E Champion did well to settle into the race but was never really a threat for the win or the podium places, with Vergne having revealed after the race that his “car was quite undriveable”. Vergne was suffering from “oversteer everywhere” which saw him wrestle his DS E-TENSE FE23 just to remain in the top five, something he successfully did.

Vergne managed to bring his car home in fifth to add some strong points to his total, although, he did slip from third to fourth in the Drivers’ Championship.

The French driver is aware that his team “need to investigate” why the car was so difficult to handle during the race ahead of next month’s Berlin double-header, in a bid to keep his hopes of a third Formula E title alive.

“It was a difficult day, qualifying wasn’t great and then in the race I struggled a lot with car balance. We need to investigate this. My car was quite undriveable with oversteer everywhere. I couldn’t really get out of the corners. It wasn’t very raceable. It was a struggle and I was just trying to hang in there and bring points back for the team, and that’s what we did.

“It’s not the result we wanted, but I’ll still gladly take those points and keep pushing forward for the championship. We’re still coming closer and closer to the top, but we’ve got some work to do.”

Credit: Sam Bloxham courtesy of FIA Formula E