The most unfortunate driver in a race of chaos

It had all been going so well. Formula E's season-opening race was a tight, tactical affair, with Envision Virgin Racing's Sam Bird coming out on top after a scintillating display of incisive passing and solid energy management.

For the first eight laps of the second event in Saudi Arabia last weekend, it appeared as if a repeat show was on the cards. Then all hell broke loose.

There were punts and spins, crashes and clashes, botched overtakes and controversial restarts. Come the end, Alexander Sims stood above the chaos - serene in victory, finally with a first FE win to his name.

The tongue-in-cheek start to this column is not intended to denigrate what was a thrilling, unpredictable and close event - and certainly not to undermine Sims's masterful drive and a well-deserved win. It merely serves to highlight just how different the two Diriyah races were.

As the sun set on the paddock last Saturday, the chaos (utterly organised this time) continued as the cars and garages were packed up, ready to travel to the next race in Santiago. And in almost typical FE fashion, the final result changed heavily after a series of investigations.

The second 2019 Diriyah E-Prix is now firmly in the history books, but one driver in particular will look back on the result and feel particularly aggrieved.

It isn't Sam Bird or Nico Muller - eliminated in crashes with Mitch Evans/Pascal Wehrlein and Ma Qing Hua. It isn't Maximilian Guenther, Nyck de Vries or Andre Lotterer, who all received penalties for safety-car infractions that dropped them out of the points (Robin Frijns was penalised too, but he had his own demons to confront after crashing out all by himself). Nor was it Sebastien Buemi or Antonio Felix da Costa, regarding their race-changing clash that ended the peace. It wasn't even Jerome D'Ambrosio, who couldn't start the race after a technical issue stopped his car on the formation grid.

It was Oliver Turvey. He'd started 18th and finished 10th on the road, which became ninth once Buemi's time-penalty for his wildly unsafe rejoining after his clash with da Costa was applied, and eighth when Lotterer's penalty came into effect.

Throw in the two converted drivethroughs for Guenther and de Vries, and Turvey should have been leaving Saudi Arabia with eight points for sixth place, more than he scored all season in 2018-19, and his best result since Berlin in 2017-18.

It's not for nothing that Turvey is regularly referred to as the most underrated FE driver

But it was not to be. Turvey was ultimately handed the largest penalty of all - disqualification from the race for using too much energy.

His misfortune, however, was not that he got pinged for a rules infraction - that is clear and the disqualification was objectively deserved on the face of it. But it is subjectively unfair because of all he and his team have gone through since he scored a podium finish at the 2017-18 Mexico City race.

Last year, NIO produced an abysmal package in the first season of FE's new rules and new car. Turvey's best result of eighth in Santiago was the season's high point, with his team-mate Tom Dillmann (not exactly a slow driver) going the entire campaign without scoring a point.

Over the summer, there has been much upheaval at the squad. Its previous senior management is largely gone, and a new company has taken over: Lisheng Racing. NIO has become the team's sponsor, with Lisheng taking over the squad under a new 333 moniker. It has a new technical and operating partner, in QEV Technologies, which has a stake in the squad. Its technology is different too, with dedicated electric racing website e-racing365 reporting that its motors and inverters have been bought in from the Dragon Racing team.

That's quite a lot for a single team - even one of those elements would be heavily disrupting.

But in keeping Turvey alongside Ma for the 2019-20 season, it kept hold of a very valuable asset. It's not for nothing that Turvey is regularly referred to as the most underrated FE driver.

He beat Nelson Piquet Jr in their first full season as team-mates in 2015-16 - the campaign in which Piquet was the reigning FE champion. He scored that sole podium in Mexico City, the same location where he had taken pole the year before. His points finishes in Santiago, Hong Kong and New York were the only reason NIO looked as good as it did in the last campaign, which, frankly, was still pretty appalling. Time and again he has produced performances better than the machinery he has been driving has deserved.

Last month's Valencia testing for the 2019-20 season suggested NIO is in for another tough time. The team was last in the overall fastest times and significantly off the pace in Autosport's assessment of the long-run efficiency performances.

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The first race in Saudi Arabia bore those indications out. Turvey qualified a respectable 10th - 12 places higher than his team-mate - but he came home 15th, unable to keep up with the frontrunners.

In the second race, he surfed the chaos as well as any out there. Yes, the two safety cars and a sudden, dramatic full-course yellow - for marshals still being on the track at the second restart - closed the pack up. But a driver can only encounter the circumstances they come across.

"Great race," he said before his disqualification was announced. "[In] qualifying we were super close. We did a good lap again, but starting 18th I guess I thought it was going to be tough, but we made some good steps and learned a lot from [race one] and the team did a good job with the car.

"We executed a really good race and definitely the pace was a lot better - we were able to fight with the other cars a bit, overtake some cars at the start. We just did a really clean race, moved forwards, took our opportunities when we could.

"To finish [in the points] on a first weekend as a team is a fantastic achievement."

Again, it was not to be.

It's a classic motorsport cliche that smaller squads or those with slower cars must seize the moment when an opportunity is presented - to score points when the regular frontrunners are throwing them away. That's why the disqualification will feel particularly painful for Turvey and NIO.

It's not guaranteed that such a chance will come again. Even if this is FE, and chaotic racing equals normality in an unpredictable category.