The traits behind Vandoorne's triumphant Formula E title charge

In a Formula E round preceded by a Pikachu parade, it was fitting that Saturday’s race was preceded by a clap of thunder that sonorously carved its way through Seoul’s Sports Complex. While Mitch Evans was surely hoping that the pack of Pokemon mascots would be a harbinger of a shock result in South Korea, nothing could steal Stoffel Vandoorne’s thunder. Ultimately, the Belgian flew back to his home in Monaco as a worthy world champion, his consistency and near ever-presence in the points through the year underpinning a successful campaign.

The 36-point buffer he held over Evans heading into the final round of the 2022 season proved to be a sufficient float. It put the onus on the Kiwi to win at least one of the two races in Seoul and hope for a collapse of catastrophic proportions for Vandoorne and Mercedes. To require that from one of Formula E’s most consistent driver and team combinations underlines the uphill challenge Evans had on his plate.

Pole on Saturday would have made things easier, and Evans’ case was helped by a mid-qualifying downpour that masked the relative lack of pace Jaguar had shown in the dry. Drizzle permeated the running during Group A, and very nearly caught Vandoorne out; it emerged that the strongest strategy was to continue lapping on the first set of tyres, rather than conduct the usual change halfway through the 12-minute session. Vandoorne and Mercedes decided to twist and could count themselves lucky nobody was able to chisel him out of fourth.

Evans, however, was even more on the ropes. His best lap time, which had booked him a spot in the duels, was erroneously deleted as he was investigated under the minimum pitstop time rule. But it was reinstated as it did not apply to the mid-session red flag produced by a luckless Alexander Sims. Both title contenders progressed into the quarter-finals; Evans beat Edoardo Mortara to get into the semis, but Vandoorne was dispatched by Pascal Wehrlein.

As the rain intensified, Evans had a semi-final with Lucas di Grassi to contend with. The Venturi driver prevailed to tie up a battle for pole with Oliver Rowland, who was imperious in the wet and had obliterated Wehrlein’s hopes of a front-row start by 1.6 seconds. The Mahindra driver proved too powerful in the final, and thus scooped the plaudits as he secured his and the team’s first pole of the year.

Aware that he had little to lose, Evans started proceedings on Saturday with an “attacking mindset”. Rowland was easy meat off the line, as the Briton’s pole position grid slot had been more saturated with the afternoon rain and thus yielded little grip at the start. Di Grassi and Evans thus outflanked him into the first corner. Although ready to settle in behind di Grassi and mount an assault later on, Evans spied an opportunity into the next corner as di Grassi loosened his defence. The Kiwi pulled to the inside line, wrested the lead away from the Brazilian driver, and hastened his efforts to build a buffer.

A pile-up early into Saturday's race forced a 40-minute red flag

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

But that would have to wait, as chaos was about to unfold at the Turn 20-21 double-right hander. Norman Nato, standing in for the injured Sam Bird, misjudged his braking in the wet and slid into the wall. Sebastien Buemi and Dan Ticktum did the same, while Nyck de Vries followed them in and his Mercedes dug underneath Buemi’s Nissan machinery. Thankfully, the halo kept de Vries protected, as Andre Lotterer, Oliver Turvey and Oliver Askew were also claimed in the incident. “Without the halo, I would have been even smaller than I am,” de Vries quipped after the race.

After around 40 minutes of clean-up, Evans began to rebuild his lead in earnest. He streaked away from Rowland on the restart (the Yorkshireman had re-passed di Grassi in the stadium prior to the red flag). The key part was to cover off Rowland’s attack mode activations, and Evans gave himself enough leeway to retain the lead after taking his own hits of 250kW power. It was hard to see the New Zealander’s win as anything but routine, as Rowland had elected to settle in and bring Mahindra a tasty haul of points amid a difficult year at the Indian squad, and di Grassi did the same to boost Venturi’s aspirations of securing the teams’ title.

It helped that a drying line began to form as the afternoon precipitation had retreated east. Even if Rowland and di Grassi could take the fight to Evans, going off-line to mount a pass would have been a risky strategy. Thus, Evans was able to extend his lead to nearly 2s by half-distance, and looked good value to more than double that by the end.

Presumably, Jaguar was indulging in a collective rain dance to lure more precipitation into proceedings. Instead, Sunday remained dry despite the forecasts, and that’s where the odds on Evans’ unlikely title bid became longer

But a slight slip at Turn 22 four laps from the end, having been distracted by a pitting Antonio Giovinazzi ahead, gave Evans a minor scare. He lost a little over a second to the chasing Rowland but managed to gather himself for the business end of the race. But if Rowland had a glimmer of hope in chasing Evans for an unlikely win, it was promptly dashed as his team-mate Sims hit the wall in the stadium. It was Sims’s third trip of the day into the fence and he was at a loss to explain his barrier-bothering antics, feeling that the inexplicable nature of his crashes summed up his reservations about Formula E.

PLUS: Why Sims is quitting Formula E to become the master of his own destiny

Regardless, Sims’s crash brought out an initial full course yellow period, before the safety car took over at the front to see out the race. Victory belonged to Evans, shrinking his deficit behind Vandoorne in the standings to 21 points as his rival finished fifth. It meant that Evans needed a Rome repeat of back-to-back wins, and hope that his rival could not finish any higher than ninth.

Evans leads the opening race on his way to victory, blasting by the Pikachu parade that greeted Formula E earlier in the day

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Presumably, Jaguar was indulging in a collective rain dance to lure more precipitation into proceedings. Instead, Sunday remained dry despite the forecasts, and that’s where the odds on Evans’ unlikely title bid became longer.

Vandoorne suffered no repeat of his Saturday qualifying anxieties and placed second in Group A, beaten by an excellent Mortara, who was looking to end the inauspicious run that had claimed his own title charge. Evans, meanwhile, could not unlock the requisite pace in the dry and could only finish seventh in the second group. He needed a lot more than luck to have any chance of beating Vandoorne to the crown.

Mortara, meanwhile, looked to be back to his swaggering best. He saw off a surprise challenge from Dan Ticktum in the quarter-finals and then cleared Vandoorne in his path to the final. There, he faced up against Antonio Felix da Costa, resulting in a closely fought tete-a-tete where the two matched each other blow-for-blow in the first two sectors. But Mortara’s slight twitch of oversteer showed da Costa a crack in his countenance, and thus yielded pole for the DS Techeetah driver. In a coincidental piece of symmetry, it meant that the Portuguese driver bookended the Gen2 era with poles in its first and last races.

Da Costa covered off Mortara at the start, which threatened a second successive first lap pile-up: di Grassi was hit side-on by Maximilian Guenther heading into Turn 1, which produced significant congestion among the cars behind. But this time everyone inexplicably made it through the corner, although it dealt multiple cars with terminal damage – including Saturday polesitter Rowland. Ticktum was also damaged despite the Briton getting into sixth place at the start, denying NIO 333 a rare day in the sun.

Da Costa’s early pace was lacking compared to the cars behind, and at this juncture Mortara smelled blood. The Swiss driver shadowed the leader on the second lap and, heading into the tight Turn 22 after the long straight along Olympic road, dived down the inside of da Costa and came up for air with the lead. Jake Dennis, who had started third alongside Vandoorne having been beaten by 2019-20 champion da Costa in their qualifying semi-final, proved ever the opportunist and followed Mortara through.

The Andretti driver attempted to cling on to the Venturi’s coattails, but Mortara was far too quick in free air and he began to build a healthy lead. "I was actually pretty surprised to see how easy it was for me at the beginning of the race to go quite a lot quicker than the others," Mortara explained afterwards, citing strong battery and energy management behind his seemingly effortless lead. The gap was approaching three seconds in Mortara’s favour, before Guenther pulled over on lap 15 with broken steering and prompted the arrival of the safety car.

Mortara on his way to a dominant victory in the finale, but his title hopes were diluted by inconsistency

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Recovering the stranded Nissan took the marshals some time, and thus produced an extra six minutes and 45 seconds of racing under Formula E’s added time rule. Regardless, it cut away some of the necessity to save energy and tyres, meaning that the closing stages would be largely flat-out. Mortara once again opened up his lead as racing resumed, and Dennis was unable to go with him and that brought da Costa back into the frame. Attempting to clear the Nuneaton-born driver around the outside at Turn 22 after the lap 19 restart, da Costa received the Andretti’s nose down the inside and was turned into a light touch with the wall. Dennis was hit with a five-second penalty, which helped Mortara’s efforts considerably.

With da Costa sent to the back of the field, Vandoorne was sitting in third but was not about to risk dicing with Dennis, particularly as Evans had only got up to seventh after starting 13th and was struggling to clear Jean-Eric Vergne. Mortara was thus left untouched, streaking to his fourth win of the year to close out the season on a high. Dennis ate into some of his lead to rescue a podium as he'd extended the gap to fourth-placed Robin Frijns, but Vandoorne was promoted to second at the flag and was granted the chance to drink in his championship win on the rostrum.

"We had a beautiful story this season with four of us [in the fight], then that got cut down to three, and then today the final two, myself and Mitch [Evans]. It's been an incredible journey and an emotional one" Stoffel Vandoorne

"After last year, I had that down moment in London that took me out of the championship. This year I turned up and I didn't want to leave anything on the table, nothing," Vandoorne reflected after the race, hiding his elation in his own imitable style. "And that's what I did all season, gave it my all, controlled it when I had to control. Only one victory but you know the consistency we showed this year I think it's been impressive.

"We had a beautiful story this season with four of us [in the fight], then that got cut down to three, and then today the final two, myself and Mitch [Evans]. So yeah, it's been an incredible journey and an emotional one."

When a driver produces that level of consistency on their side, particularly in a championship as random as Formula E, one can only be impressed. Vandoorne proved a worthy champion and, indeed, revealed he would celebrate with “multiple drinks” with the Mercedes team in the manufacturer’s last race as it retained the teams’ title. No doubt the Monday hangover was heavy, but on Sunday night, the new champion was the life and Seoul of the party.

Vandoorne celebrates his Formula E title triumph as Mercedes bows out from the series

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images