How Formula E's double-duty drivers influenced their Le Mans teams' fortunes

Once a year, thousands of people trudge to a city in north-west France to become at one with the racing gods. Le Mans is a true pilgrimage that many must walk, if one is to be enrobed by the soundscape of roaring engines and the visual feast of sportscars tearing through the night with their high-beams peeking through the darkness.

For eight of the drivers in attendance, the usual pilgrimage was made increasingly longer. Inconveniently for them, the Formula E round in Jakarta was positioned in the weekend ahead of Le Mans – perilously close to the first round of practice sessions around the Circuit de la Sarthe. Those magnificent eight had to hot-foot it halfway across the world, stave off the looming spectre of jetlag, and prepare themselves for an all-nighter strapped into a devilishly fast racing car. It’s not unthinkable that a considerable supply of ProPlus was ingested to keep the octet awake.

When you consider the relative sleeplessness for that week, the performances of the Formula E contingent ranged from the largely impressive to the exquisite. For a driver to double-duty between disciplines requires a significant degree of versatility, especially given their differing demands, but at no point did dedication look to be wanting.

Of the eight drivers – or more accurately, seven race drivers and one reserve – to make the 7,000-mile leap from Jakarta to Le Mans, all stood out in their own way. Nissan e.dams’ Sebastien Buemi even collected an outright win, as the #8 Toyota squad bested the #7 car. Buemi thus claimed his fourth Le Mans crown, joining exalted company in Yannick Dalmas, Olivier Gendebien, and Henri Pescarolo.

It took Buemi a few goes to get there, the Swiss having to wait until his seventh attempt at the around-the-clock race before finally claiming a victory with Toyota in 2018. But he’s since condensed his four wins into the last five events. Only the #7 team winning last year’s event could deny Buemi a streak of five Le Mans triumphs and, with the Hypercar class set to become populated by Peugeot and Ferrari next year, joining the likes of Derek Bell, Frank Biela, and Emanuele Pirro could become a significantly tougher challenge.

Buemi clinched his fourth Le Mans 24 Hours victory, putting him among some of the greats

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Of the three drivers in the #8, Brendon Hartley was marginally quicker on average over Buemi; taking their fastest 50 laps into account, the Kiwi had just 0.062s in hand. In those numbers, both Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi from the #7 car were faster on average – but the #8 was nonetheless dealt a better hand with safety cars and helped by the sister car’s stoppage on Sunday morning.

Analysis: How dominant Toyotas put on a show to win Le Mans 2022

DS Techeetah’s Antonio Felix da Costa was instrumental in Jota’s LMP2 triumph too, putting together an excellent opening stint which led the #38 car to jump the leading Prema ORECA of Robert Kubica after the first round of pitstops. This gave Will Stevens and Roberto Gonzalez the opportunity to build a further advantage at the front of the second-class battle, which at one point spanned a full tour of the circuit before the Prema squad got back on the same lap.

“It's my first 24-hour win,” da Costa enthused. “I've won six-hour races, eight-hour races, never 24-hour and honestly Le Mans chooses you. And what I've seen in the last few years with a Toyota stopping in the last lap, last year the WRT [LMP2 car] stopping in the last lap, you just want to stay calm and composed until the car actually crosses the line. What a moment that was to be in the garage with all the mechanics, the families, our team, and seeing the car crossing the line was so special. I was crying like a baby.

"I said ‘Guys, the tyre is destroying itself!’ They got Roberto ready in 20 seconds, and in the last moment I was coming past the pits, they said 'box!' We saved a lot of time because the tyre was completely destroyed" Antonio Felix da Costa

“The [polesitting] #31 WRT actually had a problem right at the start. So the fight was more for 22 hours with the Prema car. They were doing an amazing job, no mistakes, and with a great line-up. They put us under pressure until the last hour, so it was it was very hard for us to stay focused.”

There was, however, more than a slight scare for the Jota squad as the #38 car’s tyres began to chew themselves up during da Costa’s stint on the Sunday morning. On his third stint with the Goodyear tyres, the Portuguese driver felt his tyres begin to let go – prompting a tacit admission of panic in the ranks as da Costa wanted to come in slightly early to grab a new set. A quick flurry of action in the garage meant that Gonzalez was ready to take up the reins at hastily scheduled next stop.

Da Costa also tasted victory in the LMP2 class, despite a mid-race panic for his #38 Jota crew

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“In the morning, we started to get some tyre problems. And basically, I was halfway through my third stint on the tyre. I told the team in the last sector that I felt something strange in the tyre. And they told me, ‘You have to stay out, there is no driver ready to change.’ Because I could not do more time, I had to jump out.

“And I said ‘Guys, the tyre is destroying itself!’ They got Roberto ready in 20 seconds, and in the last moment I was coming past the pits, they said 'box!' and I just turned in to box. Honestly, we saved a lot of time here because the tyre was completely destroyed. To do a full lap like this would have been a big problem. Like I said, the race has to choose you as well. And we were the lucky ones.”

If da Costa’s suggestion that Le Mans has to choose its winners, then the #64 Corvette squad was left conspicuously without the race’s blessing. The trio of Nick Tandy, Tommy Milner and Mahindra FE driver Alexander Sims was in victory contention among the GTE Pro entrants before Francois Perrodo – the amateur in AF Corse’s pro-am LMP2 entry – made a clumsy change in direction along the Mulsanne straight and punted a blameless Sims into the wall with six hours to go.

The #64 squad was right in the thick of the fight at the front in GTE Pro, and at that stage was the sole Corvette left in the field as the #63 team had only just exited the race with terminal suspension damage. 

“It’s never nice when things happen outside of your control, but we’re on track with 60 other cars and people make mistakes,” a sanguine Sims reflected after the race. “I’m sure Perrodo didn’t plan it, we were just in the wrong place, wrong time.

“We did everything we could do up to that point. We were doing so well. Obviously it was extremely disappointing. The fact you know you won’t get another chance does make it somewhat difficult to swallow. I wouldn’t say we had it in the bag, but we had a fairly comfortable position, on pace we were good and we were up front with a decent lead.”

Disappointment also afflicted Robin Frijns, the Envision Formula E title contender who had sparkled in Le Mans qualifying with an LMP2 pole time 1.7s quicker than the next-fastest ORECA-Gibson – that of United Autosports’ #22 entry - aboard the #31 WRT machine. 

But with Rene Rast installed for the start, the #31 car was embroiled in a first-corner incident with Will Owen in the #22 that earned Rast was given a one-minute stop-go penalty. A further penalty for third crewmate Sean Gelael hitting the Vector Sport LMP2 car further compromised the team's recovery, and their race came to an end as the Dutch driver threw the car into the wall at Indianapolis to bring out the only safety car of the race.

Frijns starred in qualifying to snare top spot in the Hyperpole session, but the #31 WRT crew's race went wrong moments after the start

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

Jaguar test driver Norman Nato was tasked with driving the WRT-run Realteam #41 car, alongside Rui Andrade and Ferdinand Habsburg, which finished 17th in LMP2 after Habsburg too was embroiled in the startline mess and picked up a puncture, while Nato had a gravelly moment in the Porsche Curves on Saturday evening.

Sam Bird and Nick Cassidy were also among the GT ranks, although a Ferrari wasn't the machine to have at the Circuit de la Sarthe last weekend. Bird was driving Riley Motorsports’ Ferrari 488 GTE machinery, the US squad the only privateer outfit among the Porsche, Ferrari and Corvette factory squads in the GTE Pro ranks. But although the Riley set-up was the seventh wheel in that battle, Bird’s squad enjoyed a trouble-free run alongside Felipe Fraga and Supercars ace Shane van Gisbergen, albeit ending up the last of the Pro entries still running in fifth.

Cassidy, meanwhile, was in AF Corse’s #54 GTE Am line-up with Thomas Flohr and Francesco Castellaci. The squad ended the race three laps down on Am category winner TF Sport, but was the best-placed of the Ferraris and Cassidy was the fastest Am class Ferrari driver over the average of his best 50 laps.

But the plaudits must go to reigning Formula E champion Nyck de Vries, who was an 11th-hour call-up to the pro-am TDS Racing x Vaillante LMP2 outfit as amateur racer Philippe Cimadomo was given the boot by the organisers for causing a number of high-profile incidents in practice. The most costly of these, an FP3 crash in the Porsche Curves, necessitated the team to build up a new car from a spare monocoque.

TDS went from contesting the pro-am field to finishing fourth overall in LMP2, which underlines de Vries’ influence in the team

With the platinum-rated de Vries brought back into the team that had run his Racing Team Nederland car in the 2019-20 WEC, the #13 TDS Racing squad was moved into the full LMP2 stakes with the gold-ranked Mathias Beche and silver-classified Tijmen van der Helm already on board. Taking the average of best 50 laps set by each driver, de Vries was the quickest of all LMP2 drivers in the field, about 0.16s a lap up on category winner da Costa. The Dutchman was also three tenths up on Alpine’s Andre Negrao per lap; although the grandfathered LMP1 car had its issues throughout the race, it nonetheless underlines the impressive pace de Vries was able to uncover with minimal practice.

That TDS went from contesting the pro-am field to finishing fourth overall in LMP2, 54s down on the podium-grabbing #28 Jota, underlines de Vries’ influence in the team. Given that he’s in consideration for a Toyota LMH drive, having conducted plenty of testing for the Japanese marque, his under-the-radar performance in this year’s Le Mans suggests that de Vries would be a wise choice to promote if the team is able to find a space in either of its line-ups - or it were to expand to a third car to accommodate Sebastien Ogier.

PLUS: Why de Vries' F1 practice debut could add a new path to his current crossroads

With Peugeot and Ferrari entering the ranks next season, there’s likely to be more Formula E drivers pulling double-duty next year – indeed, Jean-Eric Vergne will be piloting one of Peugeot’s 9X8 Hypercars in addition to an expected continuation of his FE duties. But for their sake, let’s hope the premier around-the-clock endurance race doesn’t come moments after a race half the world away.

Despite Ferrari's lack of pace relative to the Porsche in GTE Am, Cassidy still shone. With the top class at Le Mans gaining entries for 2023, how many more Formula E drivers could be doubling up?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images