His team mate Stoffel Vandoorne started quite far down on the grid but made the most of his DS E-TENSE FE23 to deliver a strong comeback drive through the field and break into the top 10, eventually scoring the points for ninth place.
The end result was that at the end of the 15th race of the year, DS PENSKE hung onto its current third place in the teams’ championship: the key objective for the season finale in the British capital. Similarly, Stellantis maintained its third place in the constructors’ standings. With the gaps remaining close, there’s still everything to play for at the final race of the year.
The definitive verdict on Season 10 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will come on Sunday, with the entire DS PENSKE team and its drivers putting everything on the line to seal a coveted place in the final top three of the standings.
Eugenio Franzetti, DS Performance Director:
“The races in London are always very tricky and unpredictable, as there’s a lot of contact between the cars due to the narrow nature of the track. This is exactly what happened in Race 1, and unfortunately both our cars were involved. Despite that, at the end of an action-packed day, the provisional championship classification hasn’t changed for us as we are still on the podium of the both the teams’ and constructors’ provisional rankings. Now we are all fully focussed on tomorrow’s race, which will be extremely intense as it’s the last encounter of the year and the stakes are extremely high!”
Jean-Éric Vergne, 2018 and 2019 Formula E world champion:
“This was obviously not the result we wanted, at the end of a difficult race. But there will be other opportunities. The car was working well today and I want to end the season on a high note. The goal now is clearly to forget this opening day and focus fully on tomorrow.”
Stoffel Vandoorne, 2022 Formula E world champion:
“From the start of the weekend, we were doing everything we could to put all the elements in place for qualifying. On my last timed lap, I was feeling pretty good, but I lost time in the final sector. That meant we had to start quite far back, and we would be in for a tough race. Above all we had to steer clear of problems with some drives trying some slightly crazy moves. There were lots of contacts and incidents, and we made the most of them to come through and score two points. Now let’s see what tomorrow brings…”
Key figures since DS Automobiles entered Formula E:
- 120 races
- 4 championship titles
- 16 victories
- 51 podiums
- 24 pole positions
