- Jaguar Racing had an unfortunate outing
- 33 laps were completed
The inaugural India E-Prix saw an action-packed race held at the Hyderabad Street Circuit. DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne took a lead midway through the race and held on to his nerves right till the end to a nail-biting finish. Close at Vergne’s heels was Nick Cassidy of Envision Racing with a higher battery reserve on the final few laps of the 33-lap Round 4.
Rounding off the podium was the highly experienced Antonio Felix da Costa starting his 100th race start in E-Prix, this time for Porsche team. Antonio was elevated to the podium after Sebastien Buemi, Nick’s teammate, received a penalty for overshooting the maximum allowed power output.
Jaguar TCS’s Mitch Evans grabbed the pole position after getting the better of Jean-Eric Vergne by nearly three-tenths. But on Lap 7, Evan’s attempt to engage Attack Mode backfired and dropped him a couple of positions behind Buemi and Vergne. But disaster struck a few laps later when Jaguar’s other driver Sam Bird crashed behind Evan’s car number 9 while attempting an overtake on Nissan’s rookie Sacha Fenestraz who was looking good at P4. This accident took out both Jaguar cars out while Sasha and Maximilian Gunther of Maserati Racing both lost precious positions but escaped without damage. They finished at P12 and P13, respectively.
Round 4 also saw the deployment of Safety Car which took to the track when Jake Hughes crashed his McLaren leaving him stranded on the track after damage to the front. The Safety Car session made the race finish even more exciting. Taking P4 was Antonio’s teammate Pascal Wehrlein and coming in P5 was Nio’s Sergio Sette Camara.
Team Mahindra Racing finished the race with P6 for Oliver Rowland and P14 for Lucas di Grassi. Rowland even came close to podium position later in the race but drove wide pushing him down to sixth. Team Nissan’s first score this season came with Norman Nato P7 finish. Lastly, the bottom three point scorers were Stoffel Vandoorne (DS Penske), Andre Lotterer, and Edoardo Mortara (Maserati MSG).
Formula E will now move to Cape Town Street Circuit in South Africa for next race on 25 February.
