How Vergne kept his cool to triumph in spicy Indian Formula E encounter

In the middle of the Hussain Sagar lake, which Hyderabad’s Formula E circuit overlooks as it sweeps along the waterfront, a statue of the Buddha dwarfs the surrounding landscape. His teachings encouraged the pursuit of a lifestyle free from desperate clinging to impermanent objects or phases, based on the notion that remaining tethered to them propagates an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

Today, Buddhism’s teachings of liberation are commonly associated with mindfulness and meditation. To truly find inner peace, the Buddha walked what became known as “the Middle Way” – the line between the extremes of hedonism and asceticism. It’s an expression of moderation, not denying oneself basic pleasures, but not overindulging in them either.

Overindulgence in motorsport can be common. Competitive sport necessitates both greed and restraint in equal measure, but it’s all too easy for a racing driver to take too much rope and subsequently deal with the consequences. With two laps remaining of Hyderabad’s inaugural E-Prix, Formula E’s first race in India, it looked as though Jean-Eric Vergne had overindulged in his energy consumption.

The chasing Nick Cassidy had around 4% more useable energy left in reserve compared to the Frenchman, who’d been thrust into the lead of a wild race. But Cassidy’s multiple attempts to pass Vergne in the closing stages of the race came to naught; it proved to be that the Kiwi racer had been too restrained in his energy use, and Vergne reaped the rewards of finding the correct balance. He’d walked the Middle Way, and his patience was rewarded with his first victory in nearly two years.

It’s fair to say that the DS-Penske alliance promised much in testing but had delivered little in the opening rounds in Mexico and Saudi Arabia. Glimpses of pace appeared to be restricted only to practice sessions. Vergne and reigning champion Stoffel Vandoorne had struggled to break out of the group stages of qualifying. But Vergne’s speed come the race was marginally surprising given the strength shown by the Jaguar-powered cars on the grid, with the works Big Cat squad taking the lion’s share of plaudits having headed both practice sessions. This came amid a miserable swing for Porsche, which had controlled the opening three races.

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FP1 had already been delayed for a series of comical reasons, with police deciding to open the track for general traffic moments before the session began. Then, after the series of scooters and tuk-tuks were eventually cleared off the track, the session faced another pause when the marshals’ walkie-talkies began to run low on battery. Oh, the irony…

When the session was finally under way, championship leader Pascal Wehrlein sustained a heavy crash owing to a vehicle control unit failure. The German was carted off to hospital for precautionary checks but was discharged after reporting only soreness from the impact. Regardless, Porsche and Andretti sat out the rest of FP1 as a precaution, losing valuable track time.

A vehicle control unit fail gave Wehrlein and Porsche a rough start to the weekend

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

This was music to Jaguar’s ears. Jake Dennis had singled out the British manufacturer as a threat to Porsche’s dominance given Sam Bird’s impressive efficiency in Diriyah’s second race, and it seemed that the Andretti driver was right. Envision’s Sebastien Buemi underlined the Jag powertrain’s pace to lead FP1, while Bird was on top of second practice. While Vergne had been second in the Saturday morning session, DS Penske's tendency to flatter then subsequently deceive suggested that the half-hour of running was not going to be the true bellwether.

It looked as though normal service had resumed for the Franco-American squad when Vandoorne was dumped out of qualifying’s group phase. Mitch Evans and Buemi cemented the place of two Jaguar runners in that group, joined by Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz and Maserati MSG driver Maximilian Guenther, who was elevated into the top four when Jake Hughes had his best times stripped away following a minimum pitstop time infraction.

Despite his team-mate’s continued qualifying woes, Vergne broke with tradition and looked effortlessly quick throughout. He hurled his car to the top of the times in Group B and stayed there until moments before the end, when Rene Rast shaded him by just 0.004 seconds. Bird got the works Jaguar into the top four but Envision driver Cassidy was chiselled out by Edoardo Mortara (Maserati) by the close of the session.

Jaguar’s cars looked like the overwhelming favourites. Evans had the whip hand, Buemi was right behind Vergne, and Bird was out for blood. Cassidy, with his proclivity for making up ground in the races, was also going to be a factor

To put it bluntly, the quarter-finals were a dog’s dinner – and it was all down to one corner. The Turn 1 chicane was distinctly un-Formula E; no kerbs, walls, or bollards were put in place to keep the drivers off. Instead, they swept through as if the corner wasn’t there, flirting with the white line to stay within the confines of the circuit. This hadn’t affected the opening pair of duels, where Buemi overcame Fenestraz in an incredibly tight battle separated by just a tenth, while Evans breezed by Guenther by over a second.

Bird had been drawn against Vergne and, having been 0.3s up in the second sector, the Briton nearly gave that all away through the final corners and stayed just 0.036s ahead when Vergne finished his lap. Following that, Rast lost to Mortara having shipped half a second with a Turn 12-13 slide, with the two separated by just 0.05s before the German’s slip.

It all proved irrelevant. Bird lost his time for track limits and hurled his gloves at the wall in frustration. Mortara’s time was then chalked off, setting up what would have been a losers’ semi-final between Rast and Vergne. But Rast lost his lap too, and Vergne was hence in the bizarre situation of having to go through the motions and contest the duel on his own. Evans then beat Buemi to join Vergne in the final, which the Kiwi won by a slender 0.021s for pole.

Evans grabbed pole position but it was to be the high point of his weekend

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Here, Jaguar’s cars looked like the overwhelming favourites. Evans had the whip hand, Buemi was right behind Vergne, and Bird was out for blood. Cassidy, with his proclivity for making up ground in the races, was also going to be a factor from ninth on the grid.

Although Vergne began with the inside line for the first corner, Evans chopped across when the lights went out and kept the Parisian at bay into the hairpin. From there, Evans tried to grow his advantage, but at no point did Vergne countenance an early breakaway. Instead, it remained under a second for the first six laps, which made Evans’s next move rather curious.

On lap seven of 33, Evans took his first two minutes of attack mode. Like Diriyah, Jaguar elected to take attack mode early on in a presumed desire to be proactive. But it was hardly the pragmatic approach, particularly with the chasing pack so close behind, and the order shuffled at the hairpin as Buemi was simultaneously launching a move down the inside of Vergne. The Swiss went down the inside, and Vergne tried to defend around the outside and came up for air two-wide on the corner exit, Buemi grabbing the lead. With Fenestraz just behind them, Evans was boxed in and had given away three positions in one fell swoop – to his audible displeasure on the radio.

Evans repassed the Franco-Argentinian to sit third but could not capitalise on the leading duo trading places once again on the ninth lap. Buemi grabbed the first two minutes of his attack mode, remaining ahead of Evans, to let Vergne move up into the lead. The two again swapped around a lap later as Vergne opted for a one-minute power boost to keep another three in reserve for later.

With a clean run, Evans reckoned after the race that he had enough about him to win in Hyderabad, and had been patiently tracking the leading pair as they diced for supremacy. But the race’s first act ended with a sudden implosion in the Jaguar camp, the team’s misfortune compounded on the 13th lap.

Bird, who had made early progress to move up to fifth, was planning to take his first attack mode activation of the race. But with the train of cars ahead blocking the route to the timing loop he elected to go down the inside and looked to be making a move on Fenestraz. Instead, Bird misjudged his braking entirely and Fenestraz took evasive action, and thus the #10 Jaguar speared directly into the side of the #9. Team principal James Barclay, understandably, had his head in his hands.

Fenestraz and Guenther were innocent bystanders but ended up getting surrounded by the two Jaguars and haemorrhaged positions. With the hapless four having to manoeuvre their way back onto the circuit, the pack was shuffled once again to bring Cassidy, Rast, and Dennis into the top five.

Hopes of victory for Evans had already been compromised by his early attack mode activation before he was taken out by Jaguar team-mate Bird

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Arguably, the impromptu traffic jam at Turn 3 was more important for Vergne; as Cassidy was over two seconds behind, it gave the Frenchman clear space to consume his second attack mode a lap later. With those three minutes of 350kW, Vergne could close in on Buemi once more and mounted a lap 15 overtake to firmly sink his talons into the lead. Immediately knowing the battle was lost, Buemi changed course to pick up his own remaining attack mode, lifting Cassidy into second place.

At this stage, there was a glimmer of a Dennis special as he’d carried out a near carbon copy of his Diriyah races with a quiet ascent to the front. When Cassidy grabbed attack mode to respond to team-mate Buemi, Dennis was up to second and looked clear to challenge Vergne, but this was where the British driver peaked. Instead, Cassidy proved too rapid with his extra 50kW and swept past the Andretti machine to resume his victory challenge.

Vergne had been 1.6s up the road at this point, and thus the Kiwi had a gulf to traverse. Neatly pruning the gap on the following tours, Cassidy had managed to get to within half a second of the gold-and-black DS Penske, and with an extra 2% more energy in hand. But the challenge was paused on lap 23 when Hughes dumped his McLaren into the wall on the exit of Turn 3, caused by his mirror bizarrely getting lodged behind his steering wheel, to prompt two safety car laps.

After the restart, Cassidy spent the race throwing the kitchen sink at Vergne. He got alongside into Turn 3 on multiple occasions, but Vergne wisely placed his car to the inside. “I just put the [Boeing] 777 wings on the side,” Vergne joked afterwards of his defence, having been offered stern tests by Cassidy.

“I was able to lift in some places where it allowed me to block and that's what I've done until the end of the race. It was not a peaceful race for sure” Jean-Eric Vergne

The energy deficit to the New Zealander was rising: 3% became 4%, while the gap was a scant 0.2s two laps from home. But Vergne held on in a breathless encounter, claiming his first win since April 2021 by just 0.4s, crossing the line with no useable energy left in a perfectly judged defence. Cassidy was set to be joined on the podium by team-mate Buemi, but an overpower spike for the latter cost him dearly, elevating Antonio Felix da Costa’s Porsche onto the rostrum.

“I was able to lift in some places where it allowed me to block,” Vergne explained after the race, “and that's what I've done until the end of the race. It was not a peaceful race for sure!”

For Formula E’s first trip to India, the race itself was an unquestionable success. In a championship that looked to be going one way, the events in Hyderabad disrupted that perception and produced a scintillating encounter that will surely go down as a series classic. And, on a day where all was chaos, it was Vergne who serenely presided over the rest of the field – and, after two troubled seasons, he appeared to be a man reborn.

Vergne's first Formula E win in almost two years launched him up to third in the drivers' championship

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images