How de Vries claimed Formula E title glory as Mercedes exit bombshell looms

An FIA world championship. A drivers’ and teams’ title double for Mercedes. It’s a phenomenon that has become almost commonplace in motorsport since 2014. But none of the manufacturer’s commanding Formula 1 achievements have arrived in quite the same dramatic fashion as that of Nyck de Vries sealing the 2021 Formula E crown last weekend.

This was a driver whose pre-event six-point cushion atop the standings looked perilously slender when he qualified only 19th for the first race of the Berlin E-Prix double-header season finale. But even de Vries, who has beaten Max Verstappen to become the first-ever Dutch FIA world champion, would “not deny that the picture could have been worse” when he emerged at Tempelhof Airport still holding a three-point advantage after a round won by Lucas di Grassi.

The 2019 Formula 2 title winner rued a lost top-10 finish after contact with Alex Lynn sliced a valve and forced the Silver Arrows driver to pit to remedy a puncture. However, with the DS Techeetah duo of Jean-Eric Vergne and outgoing champion Antonio Felix da Costa squandering a 1-2 finish in part due to cumbersome team orders, Sam Bird retiring after a sudden and unprompted driveshaft failure plus Robin Frijns failing to score in 15th in the opener, de Vries still was still in prime contention.

That was until another one-lap setback. While Mercedes ditched its out-preparation-push lap strategy on Sunday for the reversed clockwise layout, the extra tour having cooked the tyres the day before to send de Vries to the back of the pack, again the 26-year-old fell behind his chief championship rivals.

He formed on the grid for the all-important decider in 13th, while Mitch Evans, just five points in arrears, would attempt to launch from third place. But the Jaguar Racing mainstay’s chances of grasping the crown evaporated almost immediately. The Kiwi lurched an inch or two out of his grid box before a suspected inverter glitch caused his car to “trip”. Evans sat motionless and all he could do was glance in the mirrors and brace for impact as the field dived either side of the stricken big cat.

With every car that continued to dart past Evans from further back on the grid, speeds increased and reaction time diminished. That left an unsighted Edoardo Mortara, second in the table, to career into the crash structure of Evans’ car. The Jaguar was pitched into the air and spun, while Mortara ripped the front-left assembly off his Venturi Racing mount. “I’m a little sore but it hurts in every aspect emotionally,” reflected Evans, who had lost his best shot at electric success. “We went through the normal starting procedure and then, when the lights went out, I went to release the paddle that triggers the start and something tripped. That was it done. It’s never ever happened in the hundreds of launches I’ve done.”

Marshals attend the damaged cars of Edoardo Mortara, Venturi Racing, Silver Arrow 02, and Mitch Evans, Jaguar Racing, Jaguar I-TYPE 5

Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Motorsport Images

Both drivers were extricated from the wreckages in time after the red flags had been waved. From a 21G collision, Mortara was taken to hospital for precautionary checks that revealed a microfracture in his fourth vertebra. The Swiss-Italian reckons it’ll side-line him for six weeks, but it might have been worse. Concerningly, both were allowed to walk back to their pit garages and the stretchers remained unused.

De Vries’ two chief rivals had been eliminated, and he could have so easily endured the same fate. He had to scurry his Mercedes to the inside and, with only inches to spare, sliced between the pitwall and the melee under a shower of carbon fibre.

In the frenzy, Lynn had popped his Mahindra Racing car ahead and so de Vries lined up 12th for the restart, once a trackside ambulance had eventually been repositioned. With Evans and Mortara downbeat and out, rookie sensation Jake Dennis (in every sense a rookie, having never driven a Formula E car this time last year) became the greatest threat.

The BMW Andretti driver needed to overturn a four-point deficit to land a remarkable debut title. On the second lap of the restarted contest, while running in eighth place, he pulled his regen braking paddle and suffered a technical failure and speared into the wall on the outside of Turn 1. He narrowly missed the Nissan e.dams of Sebastien Buemi in the fight for seventh. That position would have earned Dennis the five points needed to overcome de Vries’ podium tally, the pair level-pegging with a brace of wins apiece.

"We went through the normal starting procedure and then, when the lights went out, I went to release the paddle that triggers the start and something tripped. That was it done. It’s never ever happened in the hundreds of launches I’ve done" Mitch Evans

Dennis explained: “As soon as I came out of the last corner, we started to have a weird sound from gearbox or from the back of the powertrain. Then, when I lifted into Turn 1, the rear tyres just completely locked and put me into the wall. I don’t know if it was maybe linked to being stationary for so long in the pitlane [during the red flag]. We were in a fighting position; we had the upper hand at that point.”

The full-course yellow, analogous to a virtual safety car, was brought into action to press pause on Stoffel Vandoorne’s push for victory. The Mercedes driver had snared an unmatched third pole (although he was also quickest in qualifying in Valencia, the Belgian was disqualified for a wrongly inputted technical passport) by 0.131s over departing Nissan e.dams racer Oliver Rowland.

The Brit managed to keep tabs on Vandoorne at the lap-four restart and edged ever closer as the leading pair broke away from the pack. But subtly climbing into the battle was Venturi Racing’s Norman Nato. The sixth-starting promoted reserve driver, called up to replace Felipe Massa after his lacklustre two Formula E campaigns, had sent his Mercedes powertrain customer machine around the outside of shock superpole stunner Tom Blomqvist into Turn 1 for fourth place as the NIO 333 driver locked the fronts.

Of the lead runners, Nato was the first to twist and dive off line to activate his helping of the four-minute 35kW attack mode boost. While that initially relegated him to fifth as he re-joined the circuit, he made light work of Blomqvist and then relegated Alexander Sims for third soon after. With the surge of extra power, Nato had a sniff around the outside of Rowland into Turn 2 but could not make it stick.

Norman Nato, Venturi Racing, Silver Arrow 02

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Rowland responded, activating his first attack mode, and the pair closed in tandem to Vandoorne. With Nato in the faster setting, Vandoorne did not resist the move from his Mercedes-powered colleague into Turn 1 as Nato took the lead. And with his rhythm now interrupted, Vandoorne then ran wide at the exit the next corner to allow Sims into second and Rowland to pass as well. Nato, expected to be replaced at Venturi Racing by Lucas di Grassi next year, began to gap the field to the tune of 4.3s – a margin seldom seen in Formula E - as he used up the last of his second attack modes.

However, his romp to the spoils was interrupted by another traditional safety car, which was called into play after Antonio Felix da Costa’s title defence came to a premature end after a collision with di Grassi in his Audi. The Brazilian lunged down the inside in their battle for 13th place on the run into the Turn 9 hairpin. At the apex, the tyres of the two cars banged and that ripped the steering wheel out of di Grassi’s hands. Da Costa was then dragged into the outside wall where he retired.

Da Costa quipped: “It’s funny. He is one of the guys posting the most videos working out in the gym. He looks like he’ll still need a few more hours [working out] because I’ve never lost the steering wheel.”

While di Grassi went on to serve a drivethrough penalty, before seeking out da Costa to apologise, Rowland nudged into the rear of Nato into Turn 1 at the restart. De Vries’ impressive rise up the order had taken him to fifth at this point, at the expense of both duelling Porsches of Pascal Wehrlein and Andre Lotterer. He then thumbed the fanboost advantage into Turn 1. Sims defended stoutly and de Vries still tried to bully it down the inside, which allowed Lotterer to find space.

At the apex of Turn 2, de Vries defended from Lotterer to leave Sims to run through into clear air, while the recovering Vandoorne made it a three-wide sprint to Turn 3. However, as Vandoorne battled Lotterer in the middle, the cars pinches with de Vries on the inside. Bodywork flew and from the near miss in what would have been an inexplicable Mercedes wipe-out, de Vries escaped with only bent steering.

As Nato crossed the line for a maiden Formula E victory by 2.27s over Rowland, Vandoorne recovered past Sims for the final step on the podium. Lotterer bagged fourth ahead of Sims and his Stuttgart stablemate Wehrlein, while Bird completed a stellar rise from 22nd on the grid all the way to seventh to salvage points for Jaguar Racing as it finished runner-up in the teams’ title race.

De Vries eventually crossed the line in eighth, at which point race engineer Albert Lau calmly informed his driver of the sums. He was world champion in only his second season, backing up the stellar credentials shown throughout last year.

Nyck de Vries, Mercedes-Benz EQ, EQ Silver Arrow 02

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Not before lashing out at the rough driving standards, de Vries let the emotion slip through the cracks. “I’m lost for words,” the 2011 FIA World Karting champion said. “I’m starting to get a little bit emotional. Of course, I feel sorry for what happened to Mitch and Edo because they deserved to fight till the end. It was an extremely tight championship all the way through.”

The two-time winner, who snared a further three podiums this season, continued: “Everyone had a lot of ups and downs, and everyone was really in the same boat and that’s why we came to the point of today: everyone basically being in contention and having a shot at this championship. I just feel very, very grateful that the fortune has chosen us.

“For me personally it still needs to sink in a little bit. I don’t quite realise it yet. Ultimately, no one can take this away from me and that’s what counts and that makes me happy.”

"Today was pretty much the peak of peak. Pretty much like Nyck, it’s going to take a while [for it] to settle in because this series is designed in such a way that you never know what’s going to happen" Ian James

That is true, de Vries will forever be in the history books as the first Formula E world champion. But opportunities to turn that one title into two have taken a massive blow. For one, his links to the Williams F1 seat that will be imminently vacated by George Russell grow stronger with each passing day thanks to the fearsome support of Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff. More than that, after joining Formula E in a factory capacity only in 2019-20, the Silver Arrows squad will very soon announce its intentions to follow Audi and BMW out the door by quitting the series at the end of next season.

For now, however, it’s a remarkable success to be savoured after the countless peaks and troughs of a controversial and often clumsy season for the FIA-run championship.

Once the ready-made t-shirts celebrating the title success had been donned and team principal Ian James wiped the champagne from his eyes after the outfit snared the teams’ title to boot, he reflected: “Today was pretty much the peak of peak. Pretty much like Nyck, it’s going to take a while [for it] to settle in because this series is designed in such a way that you never know what’s going to happen.

“From a Mercedes-Benz’s perspective, we’ve got 127 years in motorsport heritage and again to be the first world champions here, we are going to be savouring that for a while.”

Being crowned champion after finishing well off the podium was an apt reflection of the whole season – random, arguably verging on the contrived. But de Vries overcame it all to become the deserved king.

Champion Nyck de Vries, Mercedes-Benz EQ, celebrate

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images