The dramatic win that vindicates a new Formula E star

This time last year in the hot Chilean sun, Maximilian Guenther lost a promising Formula E result when a powertrain problem struck his Dragon Racing car. Twelve months on, he's a race winner in the electric championship after triumphing in a sweltering Santiago race last weekend for his new squad BMW Andretti.

For a significant portion of the year just past, Guenther has had to endure struggles not of his owning making. Soon after the 2019 Santiago E-Prix, he found himself dropped by Dragon, with ex-Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr taking his seat from the next round in Mexico City. While there is nothing to suggest there was anything untoward about that development, the team explaining Guenther had completed a "three-race programme" was odd, and in conversations with the young German driver - utterly professional throughout the saga - there was a sense that all was not well behind the scenes.

Dragon brought Guenther back for the 2018-19 Rome round, which Nasr was always set to miss due to a clashing IMSA SportsCar Championship commitment, but he remained in the car for the rest of the season.

He always dealt with questions about his FE future in a calm and respectful manner, and his intention to forge a professional path in the championship was clear. That level-headed and humble approach, allied to the searing speed he showed in qualifying in Rome and the brilliant pair of fifth places he claimed during tricky races in Paris and Bern, paid off. In September, after conducting private-test running for the team, he was announced as a BMW driver.

Pre-season testing went as well as it could - Guenther topped the times. Although he made a low-key race debut in the first event of the Diriyah season-opener, he showed great pace and defensive skill during his on-the-road run to runner-up spot in the second race, but that was boosted by his misreading of the safety-car restart procedure and he was eventually classified 11th.

The 22-year-old therefore arrived back in Santiago in much the same situation to when he visited the city as a Dragon driver - pointless. But how things are different now.

For the second year in a row, the heat and track surface played major roles in the outcome of last Saturday's results. Though the Park O'Higgins track did not suffer 37.9C conditions as in 2019 (it was a mere 34.1C, per the championship's weather data) the largely relaid asphalt/concrete mixed surface meant the championship-order qualifying groups mixed up the grid nicely.

Guenther's BMW team-mate Alexander Sims, the championship leader heading to Santiago after his Diriyah victory, qualified 15th, with his fellow Saudi race winner Sam Bird 16th. Of the group-one runners, none made it through to superpole thanks to the severe track evolution factor at the 1.42-mile circuit, where dust and park detritus again left the early running drivers as effective road sweepers. A superb lap from Stoffel Vandoorne put him ninth on the grid, the highest spot of the six points leaders.

For 16 laps, Guenther's lead looked secure. Then, all of a sudden, it didn't

Mitch Evans kick-started his 2019-20 campaign by taking pole for Jaguar from group three, with Guenther joining him on the front row to claim his best-ever FE grid spot. But things did not get off to the smoothest of starts for the eventual race winner.

Off the line, Evans maintained the lead, but Mahindra Racing's Pascal Wehrlein - from third - muscled past Guenther as they ran side-by-side through the new left-hand first corner, sealing the position as both cut the runoff to go tight to the inside wall for the right-hand Turn 2.

From there, Guenther tracked the leaders through the early stages, with Evans appearing to marshal his advantage up front, while much of the chaos happened towards the rear of the tightly congested pack. After briefly falling behind Edoardo Mortara to take his first attack mode activation, Guenther passed Wehrlein on lap 16 of what would become a 40-lap event. He quickly homed in on Evans, and on lap 18 the battle for the lead began.

Evans had deployed an aggressive attack mode strategy, taking his activations on laps eight and 13. This was a pre-meditated bid to use the higher power mode while his battery temperature was comparatively low, and well away from the critical 72.6C mark that all the drivers feared reaching at the end of the race given the conditions and the demands they were making of their machinery whenever they used regen or did not hit their lift-and-coast targets.

But this approach left the Jaguar driver vulnerable to attack, and Guenther took full advantage.

After a bold move around the outside at Turns 1 and 2 was rebuffed, Guenther used the dying seconds of his final attack mode activation to blast around the outside of Evans on the rapid run to the blind left of Turn 9 - the corner that takes the track back from the perimeter roads surrounding Santiago's Movistar arena to the concrete apron in the centre of the park.

It was a scintillating move, and one that demonstrated the benefit of raising attack mode's potency by 10kW to 235kW for 2019-20. It gave Guenther the chance to get alongside and ahead, but still relied on him having to make it stick on the brakes.

For the next 16 laps, Guenther's lead looked secure. Then, very suddenly, it didn't.

The results of the last two seasons have demonstrated the strength of the DS Techeetah package, particularly when it comes to energy efficiency. The way Jean-Eric Vergne and Antonio Felix da Costa made their way up the field from 11th and 10th on the grid therefore had a very familiar feel - once they had negotiated the early shenanigans in the pack, which left Vergne with damage that would come back to bite him.

The reigning champion was running third on lap 26, and seemingly well placed to strike at Evans and Guenther, when suddenly the broken left-front wheel cover cried enough and began rubbing ferociously against the tyre it housed. This slowed Vergne, who impeded the following da Costa badly in his efforts to shake and whack the fairing away, and he eventually fell to sixth before being told to pit for repairs by the FIA.

That left da Costa as the 2018-19 constructors' champion squad's only hope, but he duly found his way to the front, and set about taking on the driver occupying his old BMW ride. On lap 35, da Costa erased the 2.1-second advantage Guenther had built to virtually nothing, clawing back 1.3s in a single tour. Guenther's radio messages became that much more clipped, the pressure mounting.

"I think I was being fed either not the complete or slightly wrong information because I was told I was good on temperatures, even though I was saying, 'I don't think I am'" Antonio Felix da Costa

On lap 36 da Costa made his move, but it wasn't a smooth one. The former Red Bull junior dived down the inside at the Turn 10 right-hand hairpin, and, without ever being properly alongside, barged his rival wide to take the lead.

But the ramifications of that incident will never be known as Guenther secured his own justice. As da Costa suddenly found himself battling late-race battery temperature issues, Guenther went back on the offensive. Although a locked-up attempt at Turn 1 on the final tour failed, he was able to repeat his heroics around the outside at Turn 9 at the death to seal the win - his first in FE and first since the 2018 Formula 2 sprint race at Silverstone.

"It feels amazing," he said afterwards. "It's really a dream coming true for me - to win my first ever Formula E race with BMW on my second weekend with them. Already in the last few weeks I really felt very familiar and confident inside the team. The transition from my old team to the new one was quite quick."

How Dragon - which failed to score with Nico Muller and Brendon Hartley on another poor weekend for the squad, which also received a penalty for causing one of the more amusing practice red flags in FE history - must envy Guenther's success.

Da Costa held on to finish second, but was left ruing what he considered to be poor communication from his team.

"I think I was being fed either not complete or slightly wrong information because I was being told I was good on temperatures, even though I was saying, 'I don't think I am'," he explained. "And yet, the moment I got the lead, they tell me, 'OK, you have to slow down'. It all came down to the last lap, but [BMW] just managed it better."

DS Techeetah team boss Mark Preston sensibly explained the squad was "still discussing what the actual chain of events were" when it came to da Costa's initial feelings. It might not have been a victory, but second finally provided a major points haul for the team - although on 25, it is 22 behind its total at this stage last season after another Vergne retirement. The reigning drivers' champion is 16th in the standings on four points.

Evans came home third, but only as a result of Mercedes' Nyck de Vries copping a penalty for a battery-temperature infringement and immediately being demoted to fifth, behind Werhlein. Like da Costa, Evans was visibly frustrated at losing a race he could have won, but when he explained the circumstances behind his fade after looking in control early on, it was understandable.

"I was getting no guidance from the energy software [on the dash]," said Evans. "So I was going blind for the first few laps. I was trying to do my best, but that made me overconsume." And there was therefore nothing he could do to arrest his slide down the order in the race's second half.

While da Costa and Evans may have been sad to lose out on the day, it was impossible not to be pleased for Guenther. After celebrating with his team, father and fans in the paddock, he could reflect on a job well done. Watching such a likeable and professional young driver prove his worth a year on from his disappointing demotion felt immensely satisfying.