Sam Bird flies the flag for England in Formula E

Brilliant Bird proves untouchable

Bird and his Jaguar team-mate Mitch Evans locked out the front row on Sunday, but at the first corner Envision Virgin’s Nick Cassidy asked big questions of his fellow New Zealander and friend Evans, who almost locked up and ran into his team-mate. But the pair of Jaguars survived to lead the early stages together, with Cassidy hot on their tail.

Following an early safety car for Jean-Eric Vergne whose DS Techeetah entry failed to get away from the grid, Bird controlled the race from the front as Venturi’s Edoardo Mortara, who had led the points coming into the weekend, collided with Jake Dennis’s BMW Andretti entry and hit the wall.

Cassidy then engaged Evans in a great fight for second place, passing the Jaguar before his Kiwi mate returned the favour. But Evans then tagged a wall and his race unravelled from there. At the finish he’d dropped to a distant 13^th. Now Cassidy fought off reigning champion Antonio Felix da Costa and prevailed to take a fine second place ahead of the DS Techeetah ace. Pascal Wehrlein and Andre Lotterer were fourth and fifth for Porsche, with Alexander Sims claiming a fine sixth for Mahindra.

Günther delivers Andretti home win

On Saturday, a perfectly judged piece of opportunism delivered German ace Maximilian Günther a well-earned victory in the first race to deliver what was effectively a home win for Michael Andretti’s factory BMW Formula E team. Günther qualified fourth and was running third with eight laps left to run when he leapt past both drivers ahead of him in one move to take a decisive lead.

Super GT and Super Formula champion Cassidy had led from pole position for Envision Virgin and looked on course for his first Formula E win. The Kiwi, so impressive in his rookie season in the electric single-seater series, had driven superbly, even keeping the lead from Vergne when he ran offline to take his mandatory Attack Mode power boost. But double Formula E champion Vergne was always going to make a move at some point and when he did so, sliding down the inside into a tight right-hander, it looked momentarily as if the DS Techeetah ace had timed it to perfection. But then his car ran out of lock and the Frenchman left a big gap down the inside – which Günther quickly filled, shooting from third and into the lead in the blink of an eye.

The victory is Günther’s first of the season, BMW’s last in Formula E as a works team, and the third of his career. Vergne finished second, while poor Cassidy even dropped off the podium as Lucas di Grassi’s Abt Audi entry stole third place.

Hard lines for Lynn

Britain’s Alex Lynn was eyeing a second podium finish of the season after qualifying a strong third for the Banbury-based Mahindra team. But the Londoner’s fortunes headed into a tailspin. At the start he challenged Vergne for second, but slid wide at Turn 1 and dropped to fifth. Then he was unlucky to be tagged by Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein as the German attempted to take his Attack Mode. Damage from the contact left Wehrlein on the sidelines, while Lynn pushed on to finish a disappointed 11^th. Oliver Rowland ended up the best of the Brits in seventh for Nissan e.Dams, with Bird in ninth. But the Jaguar driver’s weekend was about to take a big upturn.

London gets set to welcome Formula E

From New York, Bird and Formula E now head back across the Atlantic for a double date in London on 24^th and 25^th July. Britain’s capital last hosted the series at Battersea Park in 2016 before pressure from the local community cut short the race’s future. Now a new venue at the ExCel exhibition centre in the docklands will bring a new flavour to the series with a circuit layout that weaves inside and out of the halls. It promises to be spectacular.

Bird is now an 11-time winner in Formula E and with just double-headers in London and Berlin to go to complete the seventh season of the series, he is well set to become its first world champion – now that it carries such official status. Little can heal the sense of despondency this week in England in the wake of events at Wembley. But Bird is certainly holding his end up as Formula E prepares to return to the city in which its organisation is based. You could almost say it’s coming home.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.