The ex-F1 star seeking "a nice revenge" at Le Mans

Jean-Eric Vergne had just one black cloud hanging over a 2018 season in which he claimed the Formula E title with Techeetah's customer Renault package, helped G-Drive Racing to seal the European Le Mans Series title with three wins on the trot, and was rated the third best driver of the year in Autosport's Top 50 rankings. As a bonus, he had also contributed to G-Drive's victory in a cameo appearance against the World Endurance Championship regulars at Spa.

The disappointment came at the Le Mans 24 Hours where, after leading from the very first pitstop until the drop of the chequered flag, the ORECA-Gibson 07 he shared with Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola was booted out of the results for using a non-compliant fuel rig, which had been worth 242 seconds - just over a lap - in refuelling time across the whole event. That the team, run by Xavier Combet's TDS Racing operation, hadn't really needed the doctored dead man's valve to take victory in a race they had 'won' by over two laps - with faultless reliability and no mistakes from the crew - is inconsequential.