England might be reeling from another painful soccer final defeat last weekend, this time at the hands of the Spanish team, but on the race track the result went the other way. Not once, but twice.
British team E.ON NEXT Veloce Racing came away from the Hydro X Prix with two victories, beating Acciona Sainz on both Saturday and Sunday, making it the first team in a year and five days to win back-to-back Extreme E rounds.
After going fastest in Friday practice, its drivers Molly Taylor and Kevin Hansen swept the board on Saturday, winning both of their qualifying heats and the final, while also going fastest in the ‘Continental Traction Challenge’ super sector.
On Sunday, things were a little different, with no heat wins or super sector bests. The final result was the same though, including another last-gasp charge from Fraser McConnell, who – after bringing his team’s car home 1.435s back on Saturday – ended the race right on Taylor’s bumper.
“It was a bit stressful!” she tells RACER. “I knew I had a gap and then I was trying to manage it. The track was quite rough and if you pushed too hard you could come unstuck, it wasn’t as rough before so I was trying to find that balance of not backing off but just not do anything stupid.
“Then Fraser closed the gap down and I was like ‘okay crap, I’ve got to pull my finger out again and push again’ so it was a little bit up and down and I probably made it a bit too stressful for myself at the end, but there was no way he was coming past. We were taking that win.”
As Taylor resisted the Jamaican, Hansen was watching on from the Command Center, having handed the car to his teammate with a 8.680s lead over Laia Sanz, who preceded McConnell. As McConnell took chunks of time out of Taylor, it’s a miracle Hansen had any hair left, as he could be seen nervously looking on, feeding information to the team’s engineer who was in turn passing it on to Taylor.
“You have to trust that your teammate will do a great job and I really do trust Molly but I obviously want to give her the best advice I can there and I tried to look and give my (help) and use all our expertise, all without making a mistake,” he says. “It is very stressful in those laps, especially when you’re handing over, but she did a great job and to cover like that in the end was brilliant.”
It was Hansen’s thinking, as much as his driving, that gave Veloce an early boost in Sunday’s final. After the Gridplay qualifying vote, he opted to choose the far left on the grid for the race – the trend for the weekend up to that point had been to go for the right, or as far right as you could, to sneak up the inside at the first Waypoint. It looked like a risk, but it certainly paid off as he swept round the outside and into the lead instantly.
“I saw my brother (Andretti Altawkilat driver Timmy Hansen) go around the outside in qualifying and I thought when we got our selection after Gridplay that that was the only selection that was going to work so we bet on it, made a plan, we committed and it worked perfectly.”
In the four rounds that Extreme E has held in Scotland, including last year’s Hydro X Prix, Veloce has won three of them. The team might be based in London, but it’s made north of the border its own.
“That’s nice when you say it like that!” says Taylor, who moves to within one win of her former Rosberg X Racing teammate Johan Kristofferson at the top of Extreme E’s all-time wins list after Sunday’s victory. “It’s been a good weekend. You’re always chasing and trying to improve so it’s been a lot of work to try and make sure when we go out we have the right package for the conditions that we face, some good strategy and a quick car.
“It’s been very much a team effort, to get all the execution in the right moments right is not easy in Extreme E so it’s very rewarding for it all to pay off.”
Veloce is not so much riding the crest of a wave, but a tsunami right now. The team’s confidence has never been higher, and with two wins and three podiums from four so far this season, it has never been in a better place at the same point in a season. But up next is Sardinia – a place that has been a less than happy hunting ground for it over the years.
Season 1’s result was eighth. That was repeated in the first race of Season 2, with it slipping to ninth during that year’s second visit to the island. Last year the results were sixth, seventh, third, and another sixth.
The team’s very much an early championship favorite, much like last year when it had two wins from the first four starts. But it was the trip to the Italian island where last year’s challenge ultimately unraveled, and that’s something that is still on Hansen’s mind.
“We’re just trying to do our racing as good as we can,” he stresses. “We’re learning from last year that even if you’re leading or things are looking great, things can turn around so we’re really just trying to maximize every day.”
Taylor adds, “We did have a bit of bad luck last year in Sardinia so I think that’s one for us to really focus on to get the monkey off our back there.
“Sardinia’s very different, but Scotland this year is probably closer to Sardinia than Scotland was last year. In any case, it’s a new race, but we know we’ve got the package, now we just need to get Sardinia to work for us because that’s kind of the one we need to nail. So this is really good preparation for that.”
But while Extreme E’s most visited venue is somewhere it has never quite managed to gel with until now, the overriding theme coming out of Scotland is that the team has got a confidence boost at the right time – and at a moment when the series had never been more competitive.
“It’s a massive confidence boost,” Taylor says. “Everyone is so quick so we don’t take anything for granted. It’s never been as hard to reach the final in this championship as it is now. You’re scrapping from the first quali.
“So we definitely don’t take it for granted, we know where we can still improve as well, but it’s just about putting our best foot forward in every moment and if we get everything right, that should be enough to win.”
As for Hansen, he sees the challenge ahead, and he’s relishing it.
“I enjoy a challenge. We’ve had tough times in Sardinia, the team has had a long, tough history there which is just a more exciting thing to go there with two great wins here and focus on what we can improve,” he says. “We like to change history. For sure we have a big mountain to climb and we have to keep digging deep. We want to get redemption in Sardinia.”