With just two-races left to go, the FIA ABB Formula E Series continued their Race At Home Series on Saturday, by competing at the virtual New York for Round No. 6 of 8.
Both the Challenge Series and the Driver’s Grid, saw a incident filled race, while the competition was competitive and quite possibly, one of the best races that has taken place in the virtual Race At Home Series.
Challenge Series
After dominating last week at Berlin, BMW i Andretti driver, Kevin Siggy had high hopes of continuing his winning ways this week at the virtual New York.
In order to do so, Siggy among his other competitors, would have to have a decent qualifying starting position. For Siggy, he qualified on pole position with a time of 1:11.040. Lucas Mueller would place second, while Petar Brljak were the top three. Mueller did have the fastest lap for the moment, before Siggy took the top spot away narrowly edging Mueller by 0.125 seconds.
Coming into Round No. 6, Siggy had a 33 point lead over Brljak.
As the event went green, almost all the drivers made it through without an incident. However, Jacob Ried in the Venturi Racing entry, made a dive bomb move at the bottom in Turn 5, which caused an incident with a couple of drivers. After doing so, the series officials gave Reid a drive-thru penalty. Reid would continue to have issues throughout the race, as he would be credited with a 20th place finish.
Meanwhile, Mahindra Racing’s Markus Keller would end up spinning around by himself in one of the turns. Other sim racers, Joshua Rogers and Cem Bolukbasi also had troubles of their own by making contact with each other as well. A few laps later on lap 11, Bolukbasi ended up spinning again.
Despite these incidents, Siggy continued to pull away from the field with an impressive 10-second lead over second place. Eventually, the BMW i Andretti driver, would pick up another victory to his name in the Challenge Series. When Siggy crossed the finish line as the winner, he was 12-seconds ahead of second place finisher Jan von der Heyde. Siggy led wire-to-wire by leading all 15 laps.
By scoring the victory, Siggy increased his points lead over Peyo Peev and now leads the way with 53 points.
“The race was just about managing the pace and securing the extra point for fastest lap,” Siggy said. “I just pushed to the end to see how far I could go and fortunately it all worked out in the end.”
Driver’s Grid
As for the driver’s grid, Mercedes-Benz driver, Stoffel Vandoorne set the pace in qualifying by having the fastest lap time of 1:11.158 seconds. Vandoorne was looking for his first victory in the virtual challenge series, despite having four poles.
Before the race started, Mahindra Racing’s Pascal Wehrlein, had to give up his second place starting position, due to a collision the previous week with Maximilian Günther at Berlin. Therefore, Wehrlein was seen a five race grid penalty and started in the seventh position instead.
When the lights went out at the virtual New York, contact was made with several drivers in Turn 5. The unluckiest person being involved in the incident was, Günther who had taken over Wehrlein’s starting position in second. After the collision, Günther was sent all the way back to 19th.
Throughout the virtual event, there was more action seen everywhere in the racing field. On lap 3, Sebastien Buemi casually spun before getting it together after contact with drivers Oliver Turvey and Andre Lotterer. At lap 11, Wehrlein made a big slide with a bump from Oliver Rowland and Neel Jani, who was all over the back of Wehrlein. Like Buemi, Werhlein saved his vehicle from further incident.
After a close spin by Wehrlein, Rowland and Jani continued to battle for the podiums, making it a thrill to watch between the three drivers. Jani in the TAG Heuer Porsche, actually ended up spinning himself out in Turn 1 on lap 14 of 15.
While that was going on, this allowed race-leader, Vandoorne to stretch his lead and gap with the lead. The Mercedes-Benz driver would finally score his first checkered flag in the Race At Home Series Challenge, after once again, starting on the pole.
“It has taken a while before getting here to win a race!,” Vandoorne said. “Today was a perfect result; pole position, race win and also the fastest lap, so it has been a good day in the office. It has been coming for a long time, today we were just faster and did not have any problems. That was kind of 99 percent the job done.”
With the victory, Vandoorne leads over Wehrlein by one point in the championship points standings heading into the final two races next weekend, including the double points event at Berlin next Sunday.
By scoring the victory, Stoffel Vandoorne was also awarded the TAG Heuer fastest lap of the race.
Next weekend will mark the final events of the Race At Home Challenge hosted by the FIA ABB Formula E Series. The driver who ends up winning the championship in the Challenge Series, will get to drive a real life Formula E car on a race weekend. There will be two events slated for the entire weekend. The first on Saturday June 6 at the virtual New York, which will serve as the penultimate race. While, on Sunday June 7, Berlin will be the grand finale of the series, serving as a double header championship points event
Official Driver Grid Results
- Stoffel Vandoorne
- Pascal Wehrlein
- Oliver Rowland
- Antonio Felix da Costa
- Neel Jani
- Mitch Evans
- James Calado
- Sebastien Buemi
- Oliver Turvey
- Andre Lotterer
- Ma Qing Hua
- Maximilian Günther
- Robin Frijns, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Alexander Sims, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Nyck de Vries, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Brendon Hartley, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Felipe Massa, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Jean-Eric Vergne, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Jerome D’ Ambrosio, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Edoardo Mortara, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Nico Mueller, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Lucas di Grassi, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Sam Bird, OUT, Did Not Finish
Official Driver’s Grid Points Standings
- Stoffel Vandoorne, 105 points
- Pascal Wehrlein, 104 points
- Maximilian Günther, 73 points
- Oliver Rowland, 58 points
- Robin Frijns, 48 points
- Neel Jani, 35 points
- Nico Mueller, 29 points
- Edoardo Mortara, 27 points
- Antonio Felix da Costa, 26 points
- James Calado, 25 points
- Oliver Turvey, 22 points
- Nick Cassidy, 19 points
- Andre Lotterer, 13 points
- Mitch Evans, 10 points
- Sebastien Buemi, 9 points
- Nyck de Vries, 6 points
- Felipe Massa, 4 points
- Jerome D’ Ambrosio, 2 points
- Ma Qing Hua, 2 points
- Alexander Sims, 1 point
- Jean-Eric Vergne, 0 points
- Lucas di Grassi, 0 points
- Brendon Hartley, 0 points
- Sam Bird, 0 points
Official Challenge Grid Results
- Kevin Siggy
- Jan von der Heyde
- Joshua Rogers
- Cem Bolukbasi
- Peyo Peev
- Kush Maini
- Nuno Pinto
- Arjan Veltens
- Alisdair Irvine
- Petar Brljak
- Lucas Mueller
- Niek Jacobs
- Markus Keller, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Ozgur Benzes, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Scott Sovik, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Ben Hitz, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Axel La Flamme, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Yifei Ye, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Armando Iannaccone, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Jacob Reid, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Charlie Martin, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Noah Reuvers, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Mike Channell, OUT, Did Not Finish
- Verena Mei, OUT, Did Not Finish
Official Challenge Grid Standings
- Kevin Siggy, 129 points
- Peyo Peev 76 points
- Lucas Mueller, 73 points
- Petar Brljak, 71 points
- Joshua Rogers, 60 points
- Jan von der Heyde, 50 points
- Cem Bolukbasi, 24 points
- Nuno Pinto, 23 points
- Jacob Reid, 20 points
- Niek Jacobs, 16 points
- Ben Hitz, 15 points
- Oli Pahkala, 12 points
- Erhan Jakovski, 10 points
- Marius Golombeck, 10 points
- Kush Maini, 9 points
- Arjan Veltens, 8 points
- Remco Majoor, 6 points
- Kuba Brzezinski, 6 points
- Jim Parisis, 6 points
- Markus Keller, 6 points
- Alisdair Irvine, 4 points
- Noah Reuvers, 1 point
- Alex Lynn, 1 point
