The teams’ championship went down to the wire as Audi managed to beat Techeetah to the 2017/18 Formula E Championship title despite the latter’s Jean-Eric Vergne winning the final race of the season in New York.
The season finale was almost cancelled with the poor weather conditions prevailing in New York during practice and qualifying. However, the conditions improved and the race was confirmed to start at the given time.
It was bone dry by the time the drivers took the grid with sun shining as the final race in the 2017/18 season was a go. It wasn’t a great start for Buemi who was taken by the newly crowned champion Vergne who had a perfect getaway off the line.
The Frenchman along with teammate Andre Lotterer were put under investigation for a jump start. On track, Lotterer passed Buemi for second but was handed a 10-second stop/go penalty while Vergne was given a clean chit.
Lotterer pitted as the FCY period ended for a collision between NIO’s Luca Filippi and Dragon’s Jerome D’Ambrosio. It was disaster for the Dragon cars after Jose Maria Lopez had just crashed when D’Ambrosio was hit by Fiippi.
The Italian was battling Andretti’s Antonio Felix da Costa when they collided with Filippi then bumping into D’Ambrosio. Da Costa was handed a 10-second stop/go penalty with three penalty points on his superlicense.
Meanwhile, Lotterer’s penalty put pressure on Vergne as he chased off the two Audis in the fight for the teams’ championship. The Frenchman kept his lead comfortably as Lucas di Grassi cleared Buemi to take second with Daniel Abt moving through later on.
Buemi fought back to retake third but Abt took it again. At the front though, Vergne had di Grassi all over him in the end stages but the Frenchman holding fort to win the final race of his championship victory season.
Behind, Lotterer improved to finish ninth but with di Grassi in second and Abt third, it meant Audi took the teams’ title by one point from Techeetah – the former scoring 263 points to the latter’s 262.
In the drivers’ standings as well di Grassi fought his way to second after scoring only one point in the first five races. He finished the last seven races on the podium with five second place finishes and two wins.
He was helped by the fact that DS Virgin’s Sam Bird was only 10th – the British driver lost his runner-up position by one point with di Grassi scoring 144 and Bird on 143. Buemi tried hard to get Abt in the end but had to settle for fourth.
Mahindra Racing kept its fourth place in the teams’ championship after Felix Rosenqvist was fifth with Nick Heidfeld in eighth. The two drivers were in a back and forth fight with the Jaguar Racing pair of Mitch Evans and Nelson Piquet.
The Swede overtook Piquet on track and cleared Evans in the pits to then build on a solid gap leaving them to fight with Heidfeld. The German had cleared Piquet in the pits as well but the Brazilian came back to retake the position.
The aforementioned Lotterer was ninth with Bird rounding out the Top 10. In his final race for Renault, Nico Prost finished 11th after he overtook Andretti’s Stephane Sarrazin in the closing stages.
NIO’s Ma Qing Hua and DS Virgin’s Alex Lynn were the two remaining drivers to be classified in 13th and 14th – but both were a lap down to the leaders. Joining Lopez, Filippi, D’Ambrosio in the DNF list were da Costa, Maro Engel and Tom Dillmann.
