Nick Cassidy says the split of strategy over luck was “40/60” in his storming drive to first in the first race of the Berlin E-Prix doubleheader this weekend.
The Jaguar TCS driver looked very much like an outsider, qualifying ninth and dropping as low as 21st early in the race, but an aggressive top-10-wide fight for the victory, allied with him slipping back and conserving energy allowed him to power through late on and win by an unusually high margin of 4.651 seconds.
“Today I got very lucky, but you need that sometimes in Formula E, so we’ll take it,” he said. “I didn’t actually have a great start, I wasn’t that fast but we played it smart and stayed out of trouble and here we are.”
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While high overtake counts are nothing unusual in Formula E, Cassidy called Saturday’s race “insane,” telling RACER that while races typically have drivers avoiding the lead until late on to save energy, the opposite was the case this time around.
“It just seemed today that everybody was desperate to be leading,” he said. “The race was so aggressive — a lot of crashes, a lot of people pushing forwards, and I think I was one of the few guys that removed myself from that.”
Despite the win, Cassidy still wasn’t entirely satisfied with his day which began by missing out on the qualifying Duels and a shot at pole.
“I’m standing here now, it’s an amazing day and a fantastic moment, but I’m realistic,” he said. “We haven’t really been fast enough this weekend, really. I was the top Jaguar, but I was 10th in qualifying.
“So it’s not really good enough by our own standards — we’ve got a lot of work to do tonight, we need to be quicker so let’s see how tomorrow goes. Things can change very quickly.”
Sunday’s race will be shorter than Saturday’s prescribed 40 laps (it was extended by six laps after two safety car periods) but Cassidy doesn’t expect the overall picture to be radically different, joking that “it’ll change things by two laps, I guess.” Still, he does expect more people to have a go at his winning strategy of saving and staying out of trouble before charging forward, even though the Berlin track’s characteristics ought to lend itself to races where drivers should want to be leading.
“I think more people will be looking at it tomorrow, for sure,” he suggested. “It’s actually not that easy to pass here, even though it looks it. For the lead it might be, but in the pack it’s really difficult to overtake, so I think that’s why everyone was pretty ambitious.”