How DS Techeetah acted on its warnings in Marrakech

The warning signs from DS Techeetah to the rest of the Formula E grid have been plentiful this season, not least thanks to the team's blistering race pace. But, amid multiple spurned laps in qualifying and its drivers tripping over one another on track, there's been a wait to see just how potent those black-and-gold cars truly are. Antonio Felix da Costa ended that delay in some style in Marrakech as he scored the third most dominant win in the championship's history.

He cut an unhappy figure after netting second place in Santiago. A subdued qualifying left him 10th on the grid and he was then delayed in the race by team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne, who was trying to shed damaged bodywork. More painfully, he was fed misinformation about car status over the radio while battling Maximilian Guenther for the spoils. Da Costa led onto the last lap but faced critical battery temperature issues. Only 0.1-degree away from his machine shutting down, he had to slow to a crawl and concede the win.

He finished runner-up once more in Mexico City. A marginally better qualifying performance - aided by a penalty for Pascal Wehrlein - ranked him ninth, but again he and Vergne were slow to work together on track. Twice they swapped position and, although da Costa played down the cumbersome team orders after the race, the fact is he and Vergne lost two seconds to Sebastien Buemi ahead as they chopped and changed.

In Marrakech, however, da Costa and DS Techeetah stitched it all together. Da Costa had blamed his early-season qualifying troubles on unfamiliarity with the car. With each passing race, that's resolved more and more. He topped group one qualifying and ended the stages fourth fastest overall - no small feat on a dusty and green circuit - to progress through to superpole. Da Costa posted a fine 1m17.158s benchmark and then profited from Andre Lotterer's minor slide under braking into Turn 1 and scruffy Turn 5 combined with Guenther's sizeable Turn 11 lock up to snare pole.

A blinding getaway was flattered further by Guenther's sluggish launch, and da Costa duly led into the sweeping left-handed first corner. A near 0.9s advantage at the end of the opening tour appeared safe enough. Over the next 12 laps, however, he barely doubled it as opposed to romping into the distance.

Guenther was on the pace, but that he remained within touching distance of da Costa through the race's opening third was more down to the leader's supreme management. So much so, suddenly da Costa allowed his margin to be slashed. He then appeared to slow across the line and Guenther zipped past into first. A problem hadn't manifested itself, no, da Costa wanted to play a cycling-style game of team pursuit and let the BMW driver set the pace and cut the hole in the air to preserve his useable energy.

"I had to be very brave and clever when making any moves," da Costa said. "At one point, I had to let Max get really close and push him into using extra energy."

Five laps watching the rear of Guenther's car snake through the 12-corner circuit was enough for da Costa. On lap 19 he deployed his 250kw attack mode and was set to relieve Guenther of first. With more available power, he cruised by on the long run to Turn 11. And that was it as far as the former BMW driver was concerned. There would be no more games, no more swapping positions to conserve energy. From there on, da Costa would stamp his authority on the race.

An 11.4s triumph was enormous, if complimented by Guenther's late battle with Vergne that allowed da Costa to streak clear. Only in Putrajaya in season two, when Lucas di Grassi won over Sam Bird by 13.9s, and Bird's 11.6s season-four triumph over Vergne in Hong Kong have been more crushing.

"To be honest, it's all down to a great team," da Costa added. "The car was quick from the word 'go' when we got here. I was able to put it on pole, which I was really, really happy with. The race was actually a bit more complicated than it looked. We had to play a little bit of a strategic hand in there, but I'm super happy.

For the chasing pack - led by BMW and Jaguar - there's ample reason to be just as worried by Vergne's third place, which was arguably the drive of the weekend

"The good thing is the team comes back and they know where to improve and they know where to work. There's no pressure, everyone's relaxed and everyone just naturally wants to win. It's naturally a good environment in the team and when you do things while having fun at the same time, the results come out."

The Marrakech E-Prix last season ended in disaster for da Costa. Again, he'd been the long-time leader around the Circuit Moulay el Hassan but suffered a calamitous retirement six laps from the end when he collided with chasing BMW team-mate Alex Sims. One year on, he was out for redemption.

"I was thinking about that [crash] when I was coming in," da Costa said. "I wanted revenge. To be honest, on those last three laps I had a little bit of a gap and kept looking at that wall into Turn 7 and was like 'no thank you. Not this time'."

An alternative headline to da Costa's domination is that he became the ninth different winner in as many races. While there is some solace to be found in the way the competitive order in FE shifts around often, this win feels more akin to him and DS Techeetah asserting its mark on the season.

A third series victory - each with a different team - takes da Costa to the top of the standings and 11 points clear of pre-event leader Mitch Evans. Meanwhile, a first win of the season for the squad, combined with Vergne sealing a double podium in third, means DS Techeetah sits eight points pretty in the constructors' battle.

For the chasing pack - led by BMW and Jaguar - there's ample reason to be just as worried by Vergne's third place, which was arguably the drive of the weekend.

This season the Marrakech race start time was brought forward by an hour. Had FE stuck to its usual one-day format, it would have meant first practice taking place in low-light conditions. To avoid this, running spilled over on to Friday afternoon but that meant Vergne could not participate. He was busy being assessed in hospital - including tests for coronavirus - after he was knocked sideways by flu.

"I was kept in a quarantine in hospital in Marrakech," the reigning champion said. "I can let you imagine how my day was. I was feeling a little bit better [than Thursday] but I was in a five-square-metre bedroom. It was very, very hard and then for the last three days I had a 40-degree fever, so I was not at my best."

James Rossiter, formerly a Nissan driver in Super GT and the DS Techeetah test driver, was granted a last-minute e-licence to participate in first practice. In turn that made him ineligible for Sunday's rookie test, requiring four-time Le Mans 24 Hours class winner Nicolas Lapierre to jump on a late flight across the Mediterranean.

Vergne worked with FIA medical staff to return to the circuit on Saturday, but he was clearly struggling. He sounded hoarse, kept bursting into coughing fits and was all-round sheepish. Added to that, he was 45-minutes short on track experience compared to everyone else. Again unhappy with the car's brakes in qualifying, he lined up 11th for the race.

He received some good fortune on the opening lap as Sims was squeezed by Oliver Rowland into Turn 1, which delayed the pair. James Calado was dispatched of, and the continuing pattern of Porsche suffering a loss of race performance meant Lotterer conceded third. Activating his second attack mode allowed Vergne to shred the 3s deficit to Guenther and bring himself into contention for second.

The pair then engaged in battle, but a half-baked defensive move into Turn 11 from Guenther didn't keep the charging DS Techeetah behind. Vergne had plenty of room to make his manoeuvre stick. When the roles were reversed Vergne didn't show the same etiquette. With the BMW enjoying a strong run down the main straight, Vergne darted to the inside to block the pass. He closed the door at such a rate that Guenther was forced to lock all four wheels trying to avoid a collision.

In this moment, Guenther looked to have gained some inspiration. Having seen how decisive Vergne was in defence, Guenther sold the double series champion a dummy into Turn 11. Vergne responded rapidly once more and moved over and in turn he opened the whole of the outside lane for a BMW to slide right through. Guenther cut back across the track and carried on round for second.

Although he'd lost the place within the dying moments, given how ill Vergne had been, a first podium since Bern last year was a tremendous result that again highlights that even an under-the-weather driver can extract scintillating race pace from the DS Techeetah.

"At the end I had a good fight with Max, but I was sure that he was going to pass me," Vergne said. "I could not fight with the energy I had left. He could have passed on the outside or the inside, so that's why I went down the middle thinking that maybe he didn't know where I would go."

You'd be hard-pressed to find a stronger driver combination than da Costa and Vergne. Above all, you'd pick the E-Tense FE20 as the car of choice. Ominously, DS Techeetah already has all of those assets in place

Vergne labelled it his toughest weekend in FE. Evans wasn't too shy of that, either. A calamitous strategy error from Jaguar meant the Mexico City victor didn't get to post a qualifying time. He left the pits late on in group one to begin a shorter two-lap run but was too slow through the final sector. That meant he was 0.268s too late crossing the line to start a flier and would line up for the race plumb last. What's worse is that he had continued round to set an invalidated lap of 1m17.4s, which would have put him top of the pile for the pre-superpole stages.

Evans was rightly "furious", but channeled that anger in the best possible way during the race. He wasn't far off climbing a position every two laps. In a contest that featured no safety car interludes and only one last-lap yellow flag, it had been an astonishing recovery to sixth. As driver and team stated, there was no magic bullet to the meteoric and metronomic rise. Rather, a fine driver was fighting to recover the lost ground in the championship battle while driving what appears to be the second quickest race car this season.

The satisfaction for Evans was clear. "I know today could have been either a win or a P2," he said. "It was about damage limitation [after qualifying], but in terms of executing the race, it was probably on par with [winning in] Mexico."

Jaguar obviously walked away from qualifying with its tail between its legs. It had been a grave mistake, but such a high-profile error will be unlikely to reoccur. After software issues denied Evans a Santiago victory, the team rigorously analysed the data prior to Mexico, found a fix and delivered a win. That process will be repeated and the lessons will be learned.

As such, Evans will almost certainly be a title threat heading into the final races in London. But the long and short of it is this: if you want to assemble a fantasy FE team just now, you'd probably have Mark Preston at the helm with his McLaren, Arrows and Super Aguri F1 experience. You'd be hard-pressed to find a stronger driver combination than da Costa and Vergne. Above all, you'd pick the E-Tense FE20 as the car of choice. Ominously, DS Techeetah already has all of those assets in place.

On that basis, so long as its drivers can be managed when they meet on track in future, this team might well come to be measured as the new FE yardstick.