Porsche’s da Costa takes both Formula E wins in the USA

On the permanent race track in Portland, which marks an exception in the Formula E calendar characterised by street circuits, Antonio Felix da Costa not only achieved a double victory, but also his third win in a row with the triumph in Sunday’s race in Shanghai. The last time this happened was in 2020, when da Costa (then still driving for DS instead of Porsche) also achieved three consecutive victories.

However, the Portuguese driver in Porsche service did not cross the finish line first in Race 13 on Saturday: Jaguar driver Mitch Evans finished first on the track, but was given a time penalty during the race for a collision with Jake Hughes (McLaren-Nissan). It was therefore already clear at the finish that da Costa had won the race – ahead of Robin Frijns (Envision-Jaguar) and Jean-Eric Vergne (DS-Penske).

With the Jaguar of Evans, da Costa’s Porsche and the customer Jaguar of Robin Frijns, the race cars of the British and German manufacturers were once again dominant – even if Evans was ultimately only classified eighth after the five-second penalty.

The fact that a Formula E race win is currently only possible via Porsche and Jaguar was also clear on Sunday at the 14th race of the season: Da Costa in the Porsche once again won ahead of Robin Frijns in the Envision Jaguar, with Evans finishing third (and was also classified as third). With Pascal Wehrlein in the second works Porsche, fourth place also went to one of the dominant manufacturers.

Not only the results with the same race winner and runner-up suggest that the two races in Portland were quite similar. In the first two-thirds of the race, Formula E is primarily about saving energy and getting into a good starting position in the dense field. In the final third, the pace is then increased in order to finish as quickly and accurately as possible with the available energy. The narrow city circuits usually cause confusion and collisions. In theory, this was not a problem on the sometimes very wide race track in Portland, but in practice, it was no less chaotic than on a city circuit.

This was also felt by the two favourites for the world championship title, Porsche driver Wehrlein and Nick Cassidy in the works Jaguar. Following collisions and damage, Cassidy failed to score points in both races. In Saturday’s race, Wehrlein scored just one point in tenth place. On Sunday he was able to reduce Cassidy’s lead: although he damaged his front wing early in the race and dropped back to 13th place, the German (without a front wing, mind you) fought his way back up to fourth place. Cassidy (167 points) now has a twelve-point lead over his team-mates Evans and Wehrlein, who have both collected 155 points – due to the better individual results, Evans is classified as second.

Fourth in the championship is da Costa, who has already won four races with his victory in Berlin. Without the weak start to the season or the disqualification in Misano, da Costa (134 points) could still be right up there at the front. Incidentally, the disqualification from Misano (an unauthorised spring was fitted to the power pedal) has now been finalised: The FIA Court of Appeal has rejected Porsche’s protest.

In the team standings, Jaguar TCS Racing (unsurprisingly in first and second place in the drivers’ standings) leads with 322 points ahead of Tag Heuer Porsche (289 points). The two manufacturers will decide the team championship between themselves, as the gap between DS-Penske (184 points) and Andretti-Porsche (168) is too large. Last year’s team world champion Envision Jaguar has only collected 88 points so far – 21 of which came from the Portland weekend.

The Formula E season comes to an end with another double-header in London (20/21 July).

fiaformulae.com, fiaformulae.com (race results Saturday), fiaformulae.com (race results sunday), fiaformulae.com (driver ranking), fiaformulae.com (team ranking)