How Vandoorne recaptured Mercedes' winning feeling in Monaco

It’s fitting that Monaco, a principality famed for its casinos, continues to host a championship that can be likened to a roulette table. Of course, Formula E’s new qualifying format has produced a little more method to its madness, but there’s still a tremendous slice of luck involved in deciding its victors.

But it seems the roulette table was never Stoffel Vandoorne’s calling. Instead, the Mercedes driver worked his way through the Monaco E-Prix weekend with the calculated cunning of a poker player. He knew his hand was good. He knew not the hands of the other players at the table, but it became apparent over the course of the race that his was simply more valuable. Those cards remained up the Belgian’s sleeve, to be turned over only when the time was right.

Net result? Vandoorne left Monaco – or rather, walked to his apartment in Monaco – armed with the championship lead, a winner’s trophy, and a smile of satisfaction.

Most alarmingly, it was Vandoorne’s first win since last year’s Rome round, especially baffling given his two pole positions this season. Mercedes, for all its promise in the Diriyah season opener, has also not won since reigning champion Nyck de Vries carried the Silver Arrows to the top step there.

To provide the first hint of Mercedes’ pace, it was de Vries – not Vandoorne – who swept to the top of the timing boards in the first free practice session. The Dutchman was almost half a second quicker than the similarly Mercedes-powered Venturi of Edoardo Mortara, before Nick Cassidy crept into second with a late effort, just over a tenth shy of de Vries. But those hints were quickly washed away in FP2, as 2021 Monaco E-Prix winner Antonio Felix da Costa beat Mitch Evans to top spot, with Robin Frijns third fastest to suggest a follow-up battle between the three protagonists in last year’s edition of the race.

De Vries, meanwhile, was sixth-fastest as Vandoorne only got up to 11th place. Solid if unspectacular on paper, but Vandoorne was happy regardless with the race-style runs he’d produced across the sessions. When it came to qualifying, Vandoorne drew first blood and topped the Group A session, 0.085s clear of Pascal Wehrlein.

Vandoorne didn't show his hand immediately

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

The new qualifying format, once again, is arguably doing its job in rewarding the best teams and drivers, and fellow frontrunners Jean-Eric Vergne and Lucas di Grassi joined him in making the duels. De Vries ensured that Mercedes had two fighters in the ring for pole by finishing second-best in Group B a scant 0.026s in arrears to session leader Evans, who was looking to continue a rich vein of form after his back-to-back victories in Rome. Duels ever-presents Andre Lotterer and Frijns also made the cut, at the expense of da Costa and Oliver Rowland, who had received changes to his braking software and hardware to draw more qualifying pace from his Mahindra.

It was at this juncture that, of the two Mercedes, Vandoorne would be the team’s tip for pole as de Vries struggled to corral a tail-happy car around the Circuit de Monaco on 250kW power. Vandoorne beat Frijns in the opening duel, while de Vries did not progress from his bout with Vergne and, by dint of having the slowest time among those knocked out in the quarters, could only secure an eighth-place grid slot. An all-Porsche quarter-final between Wehrlein and Lotterer ended in favour of the former, while Evans brushed aside di Grassi to book a semi-final battle with Vergne.

Although Wehrlein had been outperformed by Vandoorne in the groups, the German took his revenge with a cleaner lap to cement his second appearance in the finals, leaving Vandoorne to line up fourth. Evans then dispatched Vergne to make his first appearance in the pole position shootout, where the Kiwi kicked his pace into another gear. A mighty lap from the Jaguar driver carried him to pole, becoming the first driver of the weekend to reach the 1m29s and beat Wehrlein by a healthy quarter of a second margin. In pursuit of a third successive win, Evans was in the best place possible to make that dream come true.

"It was a bit of a shock when I found that I was down on energy. Obviously towing everyone around wasn’t great, but I just was a bit surprised" Mitch Evans

It looked good at the start. Evans covered off Wehrlein into Ste Devote and began the heady ascent up Beau Rivage with the lead still in his pocket. While track position at Monaco has been historically valued, it comes with a caveat in the Formula E battleground. As the leader of the queue, Evans was punching a hole in the air for the following cars to slip through, meaning he expended more energy. Even though Jaguar had planned for that, it still caught Evans off-guard that he was consuming energy considerably more than his rivals.

“The first few laps I was underconsuming and our plan was looking strong,” Evans recalled after the race. “But we got the energy [figures] and it was a bit of a shock when I found that I was down on energy. Obviously towing everyone around wasn’t great, but I just was a bit surprised. Then the whole approach changes, you start to try and underconsume more to recover energy.”

By the ninth lap Wehrlein was challenging for the lead, and considered making a move at the Nouvelle Chicane, before locking up and later deciding to wait for the attack mode window to open. Evans eventually blinked and took attack mode on lap 13, with Vandoorne – still in fourth – following suit. But Vergne, who had taken his own first activation two laps prior, was able to emerge back ahead of Vandoorne and undercut Evans in the process. Vergne’s gambit earned him the lead on the following tour when Wehrlein picked up his first dose of 250kW power.

Vandoorne bided his time and waited for his moment early in the race

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Evans was still attempting to cram more energy back into his battery, and thus proved easy meat for Wehrlein – who made his way past at the Nouvelle Chicane this time with little resistance. A lap later, Wehrlein issued Vergne with a carbon copy of his move on Evans, sweeping past into the chicane and grabbing the lead. Behind them, Vandoorne began to offer a glimpse of his hand and cleared Evans into the same corner, getting onto the back of Vergne’s DS Techeetah to loom large in the battle for the lead.

Wehrlein’s lead was short-lived and ended in heartbreak. On the 16th lap, his Porsche lost power and shut down on him. Vergne and Vandoorne brushed the ailing Wehrlein aside at the Fairmont hairpin as the white-and-black machine ambled through the tunnel and eventually came to rest.

“I lost power, I lost drive, I lost radio communication, the car just switched off,” Wehrlein rued afterwards, before gently teasing Autosport for failing to pack sun cream. “[Up to that point] it was really good. The whole race went as planned, I was leading the race and I felt strong… yeah, there’s not much to say.”

Between Wehrlein’s crawl to a halt and the emergence of a full-course yellow, Vergne took his second attack mode activation, but was left with minimal time to use it as the race was neutralised. As Vergne went off-line at Casino Square to run over the activation loop, Vandoorne moved into the lead with Evans in tow, and was naturally impervious to the French driver’s higher power mode. In short, Vergne had dropped two places with no apparent benefit.

Once full-course yellow conditions were lifted, Vandoorne had a lead of around three seconds over Evans, having got the rub of the green with his location on track once full-speed running resumed. That gave him a free window to pick his second attack mode up but, like Vergne, his final four-minute stint of 250kW was equally wasted following an immediate safety car to collect Lotterer’s Porsche from the Ste Devote wall.

In a tussle for sixth, Lotterer saw Rowland attempt an ambitious lunge at the first corner – with Rowland careering into the wall and taking the three-time Le Mans winner with him. Lotterer was left with a large bruise and a small cut to his left hand in the impact, which he later carefully dabbed with an ice-filled latex glove in the post-race media pen.

On the restart, it became apparent that Vandoorne had it all in his grasp. Picking up from where he left off before the Porsche Taycan pace car’s interruption, he set about reinstating his lead – helped by Evans having to polish off his last attack mode and using it to repass Vergne after dropping behind. By that stage, Vandoorne was 2.3s up the road – and although Evans took a second out of that lead by the close of the race, the Kortrijk-born driver serenely crossed the line to wrap up a well-worked victory.

Evans used up the additional energy from his second attack mode activation repassing Vergne as Vandoorne cruised to win

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“I won here in 2015 in GP2, but in Formula E it’s not always gone my way here – let’s say last year was a struggle!” Vandoorne noted in the post-race press conference. “But this year we qualified well, and then I knew we could be in the mix for a good race. And I felt confident on the race running in practice.

“The race was kind of just playing the long game; I saw Mitch and Pascal weren’t really running away at the start, so I managed to actually save quite a bit of energy in the early couple of laps. That really helped me, especially when I got into the lead. And then I was just able to build the gap, take that second attack mode and remain there.”

Evans, for all his energy management issues earlier on in the race, was pleased to finish second – but admitted that he was confused that the Jaguar had a spell where the efficiency of its I-Type 5 motor seemed to go missing in action. Having weathered the storm, his late use of attack mode managed to cement the runner-up spot as Vergne had not been able to enjoy the perks of his own second activation.

Regardless, Vergne was quietly pleased with a podium finish, albeit aggrieved to stumble into the full-course yellow at an inopportune time.

"The race was kind of just playing the long game; I saw Mitch and Pascal weren’t really running away at the start, so I managed to actually save quite a bit of energy in the early couple of laps" Stoffel Vandoorne

“That cost me the most in the race,” he said. “But nevertheless, we had a good car today. I’m pretty happy to be consistently fast on every track since the beginning of the year. We’ll keep pushing and keep on working very hard, Berlin [venue for the next round] is a good track for us in general. So hopefully, finally, I can fight for a race win.”

There’s a clear championship order forming now as the half-distance mark of the 2021-22 season approaches. Vandoorne, Vergne, Evans, and Frijns have broken away from the peloton – the latter securing fourth in the race to continue his consistent streak. But with nine races left, there’s plenty of chance for the chasing pack to get back on terms, which could make an already-tantalising four-way scrap for honours even more alluring.

Vandoorne's first win of the season has put him into the championship lead

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images