DS Penske picks up more valuable points in Tokyo Formula E weekend

The Franco-American team ended its weekend in Japan on a positive note. After securing eighth place on Saturday, Jean-Eric Vergne repeated his performance on Sunday with a solid sixth place finish. His team-mate Max Guenther took the point for 10th place after a strategic and intense race.

In Formula E, the second race of the double-header does not include a Pitboost (mandatory recharge for strategic reasons and not due to lack of energy), and was scheduled to be slightly shorter (32 laps instead of 35) than the previous day’s race. This was designed to encourage teams to draw up new energy strategies and provide more excitement on the track, something DS Automobiles is accustomed to doing, thanks to its long experience in the discipline.

In Tokyo, however, the format for the second day was the same as the previous day, with a practice session – the third of the weekend – scheduled for 8am. At this early hour, it was already hot on the Tokyo Big Sight circuit, which had dried out overnight. The championship’s electric single-seaters then set the stopwatches alight, significantly improving on the reference times set on Friday during the first practice session.

Right from the start of the session, it was clear that the Porsches and Nissans were on form, as was Vergne’s DS Penske, which was in fourth position, 8 thousandths of a second behind Jake Hughes’ Maserati and three-tenths of a second off the lead. Max Guenther, eighth in the other DS Penske, was only two tenths of a second further back, which seemed to bode well for qualifying. Especially as this time the session was able to go ahead as normal, after Saturday’s qualifying was cancelled due to heavy rain that had made the circuit unraceable.

In Group A, Vergne first took his DS E-Tense FE25 to the quarter-finals at a promising pace. Just behind him, still with more favourable track conditions than the day before, Guenther put in a very good lap but slipped slightly in the penultimate corner and missed out on qualifying by one tenth of a second. In the duels, Vergne beat Lucas Di Grassi (Lola Yamaha) after a well-driven lap and faced Oliver Rowland in the semi-finals. But the British driver, who leads the championship, proved untouchable. The French driver finally started from the second row of the grid in his DS E-Tense FE25.

A well-managed race by the DS Penske drivers

The start went smoothly on this narrow circuit where overtaking opportunities are few and far between. The Attack Mode activation zone, located on the outside of Turn 4, was not particularly penalising but did not allow drivers to hold their position. Drivers then had to use their extra power to get back into the race. The first drivers to take advantage of this were those in the first third of the race, after only two laps. Vergne chose to shift his strategy slightly in order to protect his position. But behind him, several cars collided and a short Full Course Yellow procedure was triggered to remove debris from the track.

When the race resumed, several of the frontrunners were quick to activate their second Attack Mode as we reached the halfway point. Others, taking a more cautious approach, delayed their energy use, promising a tense end to the race, with battery management playing an important role right up to the final corners. The DS Penske drivers are in constant communication with their engineers to seize every opportunity. Often in a good position in the pack, Vergne triggered his second Attack mode at a favourable moment and moved into fifth place. With only nine laps to go, the French driver intelligently resists the attacks of the drivers who still have a surplus of power under the regulations. He crossed the finish line in sixth place, with the top 10 drivers finishing within five seconds of each other.

Guenther, in a respectable 10th place, took the last point available at the end of this hard-fought race. In the end, the Franco-American team scored important points as we enter the second half of season 11.

After this exciting double-header, Formula E remains in Asia for a little longer, with two races scheduled in Shanghai (China) on 31 May and 1 June.