FE | Both DS Penske scored points in Sao Paulo

This was the French-American team's goal for the weekend: to bring both cars to the finish line and, of course, if possible, into the points. The two drivers worked well together on the 2.933km, 11-turn circuit which, with its numerous straights, required a great deal of effort from an energy management point of view.

Stoffel Vandoorne, who took his first pole position for DS Penske at the same circuit in 2023, knows this better than anyone. On that occasion, the Belgian driver led more than half the race before being forced to slow down to save battery, handing the victory to Jaguar and thus having to settle for sixth place.

For many weeks, Vandoorne and Jean-Éric Vergne worked on this circuit in the simulator with a former Jaguar strategist, Phil Charles, who joined the team after the Mexico race in January. The results were not exactly as expected, but both cars showed extremely interesting elements for the rest of the season.

Pole position by two thousandths of a second

At 7.30am on Saturday 16 March, on the Sao Paulo circuit there were already 26°C in the air and 30°C on the asphalt. These conditions were ideal for fine-tuning the cars for qualifying.

A red flag interrupted the session, but Vandoorne had already had time to place his DS E-TENSE FE23 in second position, less than a tenth of a second behind Sam Bird's McLaren.

In qualifying, on a track that continued to improve and warm up, Vergne initially adopted a wait-and-see attitude – within the limits of the regulation, which requires a fast lap within the first 6 minutes – while many competitors, on the contrary, were already proceeding with cooling laps . But everything comes from those who wait and when the two DS E-TENSE FE23 came out into the open, Vergne and Vandoorne recorded the two fastest times in Group A.

Both advanced to the quarterfinals, while championship leader Nick Cassidy failed to progress past the group stages. The first duels went well for the two, who then found themselves against each other in the semi-finals. Like last year, Vandoorne qualified for the final and this time he found himself facing Pascal Wehrlein's Porsche. The DS Penske driver was expected to repeat the 2023 feat, but Wehrlein took the fifth pole position of his Formula E career by two thousandths of a second.

Building on the data collected last year and focusing on a more energy efficient strategy, the two DS Penske drivers started from second and third positions on the grid. Over the course of the 34 laps of the race [31 + 3 giri per le neutralizzazioni]the suffocating heat [35°C nell’aria, 60°C l’asfalto] it weighed heavily on the cars and each driver tried to get rid of the Attack modes as quickly as possible, the activation zone of which was quite penalizing when driving in a group, so much so that each driver easily lost three or four positions.

As the gaps began to open, the intervention of two safety cars meant that the drivers regrouped. The race ended like this, with six different teams in the first seven places.

At the end of this fourth round of the season, the points scored by Vergne and Vandoorne place DS Penske in third place in the constructors' championship. Vergne is fourth in the drivers' standings, equal on points with third-placed Mitch Evans of Jaguar.

The next round of the Formula E World Championship will take place on April 30, for the first time on the streets of the Japanese capital of Tokyo. This ephemeral circuit, which no one knows as it is making its debut, will perhaps allow the more experienced teams to stand out. Last year, between Cape Town (South Africa), Hyderabad (India) and Sao Paulo, DS Penske scored the most points, ahead of Jaguar and Porsche.