London, UK, August 2nd 2023 - The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship held its final meeting of season nine this weekend in London, bringing the curtain down an incredibly intense and closely-contested first championship featuring the GEN3 race cars.
A season finale held for the third year running at the ExCel in East London’s Docklands area, where the unique double header was contested both inside and outside the exhibition centre. With on-track overtaking opportunities relatively few and far between, qualifying was always likely to be crucial. However, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Eric Vergne were unfortunately unable to do better than eighth and thirteenth in their DS E-TENSE FE23s in qualifying for Saturday’s race. Although the pair pushed as hard as they could in the opening contest, they did not get the rub of the green during an incident-packed race that featured two red flags. Vergne was forced to retire after clashing with another car and picking up a puncture whilst Vandoorne finished just outside the points (11th).
The entire DS PENSKE team worked incredibly hard to up their game ahead of qualifying for Sunday’s finale. Their persistence and determination were rewarded by a better qualifying session on Sunday (Vandoorne 5th and Vergne 11th) before rain then disrupted the final race of the season. After two attempts to start the race with the safety car, the race director was forced to delay the start procedure with a red flag and wait until conditions improved. The track surface remained slippery when racing finally got underway but Stoffel Vandoorne demonstrated his impressive wet weather driving skills to secure a fine fifth place and a result that will undoubtedly boost morale throughout the team ahead of the summer break. A break that DS PENSKE will undoubtedly be using to come back even stronger in season ten, which is due to kick off on 23-27 October at pre-season testing in Valencia, Spain.
Although he clearly would have hoped for a better final outcome, and despite drawing a blank this weekend, Jean-Eric Vergne finishes the season in fifth place in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, having won in Hyderabad and secured two podium finishes, in Cape Town (2nd) and Berlin (3rd in race 2). DS PENSKE also finishes in fifth position in the teams’ championship having fought hard right to the end, whilst Stoffel Vandoorne, the outgoing world champion, ends the year in eleventh place after a tough season but one that he nonetheless ended on a promising note.
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