Jean-Éric Vergne attributes his victory in the Hyderabad E-Prix on Saturday to his energy management efforts, when a small technical glitch forced him to slow down and made him fear the worse.
• Read also: Formula E: successful debut for McLaren
• Read also: Formula E: Porsche advantage at the start of the season
Starting from second place on the starting grid, the DS Penske driver quickly realized that a problem was compromising the efficiency of the energy recovery system, so he had to release the accelerator much more early on corner entry.
Despite everything, he managed, by virtue of a good strategy with the segments in attack mode, to take the lead and defend his victory with difficulty in front of Nick Cassidy, in ambush a few centimeters behind him until the finish line.
He even indicated that he had come to terms with the idea of losing the victory, adapting his driving in order to avoid losing too many positions at the end of the event.
“I was really struggling with the energy, so at some point I thought Nick was going to overtake me,” Vergne said, according to comments reported by the site The Race. I got used to the idea since I had a lot of misery and I didn’t want to lose too many positions to the guys behind.
“I am very, very happy. It was a tough race. I had to defend hard at the end, but we found a way to win. We made no mistake.”
A Boeing
The two-time series champion signed an 11th victory since his debut in the competition in 2014-2015. The veteran, however, had not won a race since April 10, 2021. His bosses were very complimentary to him on Saturday.
“JEV did a ‘JEV’ in the end, so we call it the Boeing 747 because no one can pass it!” laughed DS Penske director Leo Thomas.
For Vergne, the solution consisted in recovering the energy in more sinuous portions of the circuit, where overtaking maneuvers are more difficult even when the chaser is faster.
“I was able to lift my foot in places that allowed me to block well and that’s what I did until the end of the race. It was not a quiet race, that’s for sure,” acknowledged the winner.
With the win, Vergne moved up to third in the drivers’ standings with 31 points after four races. Pascal Wehrlein (Porsche) remains in the lead with 80 points, 18 more than Jake Dennis (Andretti).
The Cap-Town E-Prix, in South Africa, will be the next event, on February 25, and will be broadcast by the TVA Sports channel.