Mahindra Racing sweeps virtual races at virtual New York

Ahead of the grand finale, the ABB FIA Formula E continued their Race At Home Challenge with Round 7 of 8 taking place at virtual New York. It was the penultimate race, before Sunday’s double-points race at the virtual Berlin.

In the Challenge Series, Mahindra Racing’s Lucas Mueller qualified on the pole with a time of 1:11.006. In doing so, he beat out competitor Kevin Siggy by 0.076 seconds to get the pole position.

Unlike last week’s race where many drivers had trouble getting through the first turn, many if not all drivers made it through cleanly without incident. The virtual event was mainly smooth barring a couple of minor incidents (shunts) throughout the pack. Though, Markus Keller and Noah Reuvers were battling hard with each other for 14th and 15th, just three laps into the race. Another battle also heated up between Siggy and Joshua Rogers for podium positions while both of them tried to close in on the race leader, Mueller.

However, Mueller proved to be the fastest competitor out there as he was back on top and took the checkered flag. The Mahindra driver led all 15 laps and had no incidents. Despite getting the victory, BMW i Andretti driver, Kevin Siggy, will start on pole position for Sunday’s finale.

“Kevin [Siggy] was really fast,!” Mueller said. “It was a really good race. I was sweating, but I am enjoying it. I do not want to finish second, I want to finish in P1. So, I have my goal tomorrow and will try to win the final race in Berlin.”

Driver’s Grid

In qualifying for the driver’s grid, new Audi driver Kelvin van der Linde in place of Daniel Abt was on the original pole position. But, it was the usual rival of Pascal Wehrlein who squeezed by in the Mahindra Racing machine and scored the pole with a time of 1:11.175. Wehrlein won the pole position by 0.274 seconds.

Kelvin van der Linde fell to second, Nissan e.dams driver Sebastien Buemi was third, BMW i Andretti’s Maximilian Gunther was fourth, as last week’s winner Stoffel Vandoorne was fifth, rounding out the top five starting positions. There were no incidents in qualifying as everyone had a clean lap.

When the lights dropped at the virtual New York, all 24 cars went down into the first turn. Almost all of them made it through without any major pileup as we have seen in recent races. Unfortunately, Buemi got punted in the first couple of turns and was sent to last place in the running order. Eventually, Buemi was eliminated due to the battle royal format.

More incidents arose in the occurring laps. Mercedes-Benz driver and Vandoorne’s teammate, Nyck de Vries spun around on Lap 2 which caused him to go in the back. Another unfortunate driver who had an incident early was Lucas di Grassi. Di Grassi spun on Lap 7 and was also eliminated in the race. Meanwhile, in mid-race, there was a lot of shunting going on between drivers Qinghua Ma and Joel Eriksson.

About the halfway point, a battle ensued between Oliver Rowland and Kelvin van der Linde for the second position. Both would battle until the very last lap of the race. By battling hard with each other, this allowed Wehrlein to pull away with the lead. Finally, Rowland got by van der Linde by forcing the South African driver out of the way.

As all of that happened, it was smooth sailing for Wehrlein as he once again found himself with another checkered flag, making it a sweep for Mahindra Racing in Saturday’s virtual Race At Home Challenges.

With Wehrlein picking up the victory, he is now the championship points leader ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne going into Sunday’s double points series finale at the virtual Berlin.

“It was a good race,” Wehrlein said. “It was actually one of the most difficult races of the series because I made a mistake at the start. I didn’t see the lights go out because of the halo and I tried to switch the camera position, but I couldn’t change it back, so I did the entire race with the wrong camera. I was very happy that I had a small gap I could manage otherwise it might have been a different race result. There’s still everything to play for tomorrow with double points on offer and I’m looking forward to the battle for the championship title.”

Official Driver Grid Results

  1. Pascal Wehrlein
  2. Oliver Rowland
  3. Kelvin van der Linde
  4. Stoffel Vandoorne
  5. Maximilian Gunther
  6. Felipe Massa
  7. Edoardo Mortara
  8. Antonio Felix da Costa
  9. Robin Frijns
  10. Oliver Turvey
  11. Neel Jani
  12. Mitch Evans
  13. Alexander Sims, OUT, Did Not Finish
  14. Sam Bird, OUT, Did Not Finish
  15. James Calado, OUT, Did Not Finish
  16. Qinghua Ma, OUT, Did Not Finish
  17. Jean-Eric Vergne, OUT, Did Not Finish
  18. Andre Lotterer, OUT, Did Not Finish
  19. Joel Eriksson, OUT, Did Not Finish
  20. Lucas di Grassi, OUT, Did Not Finish
  21. Nyck de Vries, OUT, Did Not Finish
  22. Brendon Hartley, OUT, Did Not Finish
  23. Jerome D’ Ambrosio, OUT, Did Not Finish
  24. Sebastien Buemi, OUT, Did Not Finish

Official Driver Grid Standings

  1. Pascal Wehrlein, 130 points
  2. Stoffel Vandoorne, 118 points
  3. Maxmilian Gunther, 83 points
  4. Oliver Rowland, 76 points
  5. Robin Frijns, 50 points
  6. Neel Jani, 35 points
  7. Edoardo Mortara, 33 points
  8. Antonio Felix da Costa, 30 points
  9. Nico Mueller, 29 points
  10. James Calado, 25 points
  11. Oliver Turvey, 23 points
  12. Nick Cassidy, 19 points
  13. Kelvin van der Linde, 15 points
  14. Andre Lotterer, 13 points
  15. Felipe Massa, 10 points
  16. Mitch Evans, 10 points
  17. Sebastien Buemi, 9 points
  18. Nyck de Vries, 6 points
  19. Jereome D’ Ambrosio, 2 points
  20. Ma Qing Hua, 2 points
  21. Alexander Sims, 1 points
  22. Jean-Eric Vergne, 0 points
  23. Lucas di Grassi, 0 points
  24. Brendon Hartley, 0 points
  25. Sam Bird, 0 points

Official Challenge Grid Results

  1. Lucas Mueller
  2. Kevin Siggy
  3. Joshua Rogers
  4. Kush Maini
  5. Petar Brljak
  6. Peyo Peev
  7. Ben Hitz
  8. Marius Golombeck
  9. Jacob Reid
  10. Niek Jacobs
  11. Cem Bolukbasi
  12. Alisdair Irvine
  13. Nuno Pinto, OUT, Did Not Finish
  14. Ozgur Benzes, OUT, Did Not Finish
  15. Markus Keller, OUT, Did Not Finish
  16. Moritz Lohner, OUT, Did Not Finish
  17. Arjan Veltens, OUT, Did Not Finish
  18. Noah Reuvers, OUT, Did Not Finish
  19. Yifei Ye, OUT, Did Not Finish
  20. Scott Sovik, OUT, Did Not Finish
  21. Sophia Florsch, OUT, Did Not Finish
  22. Sergio Jimenez, OUT, Did Not Finish
  23. Charlie Martin, OUT, Did Not Finish
  24. Axel La Flamme, OUT, Did Not Finish

Official Challenge Grid Standings

  1. Kevin Siggy, 148 points
  2. Lucas Mueller, 99 points
  3. Peyo Peev, 84 points
  4. Petar Brljak, 81 points
  5. Joshua Rogers, 75 points
  6. Jan von der Heyde, 50 points
  7. Nuno Pinto, 23 points
  8. Jacob Reid, 22 points
  9. Ben HItz, 21 points
  10. Kush Maini, 21 points
  11. Niek Jacobs, 17 points
  12. Marius Golombeck, 14 points
  13. Olli Pahkala, 12 points
  14. Cem Bolukbasi, 12 points
  15. Erhan Jajovski, 10 points
  16. Remco Majoor, 6 points
  17. Kuba Brzezinski, 6 points
  18. Jim Parisis, 6 points
  19. Markus Keller, 6 points
  20. Arjan Veltens, 4 points
  21. Alsdair Irvine, 2 points
  22. Noah Reuvers, 1 points
  23. Alex Lynn, 1 points

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SpeedwayMedia.com

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