Edoardo Mortara: Happy ending with horror 🎥
Edoardo Mortara's title dreams ended with a bang at the Formula E finale in Berlin. Despite the starting accident, the Geneva native becomes world championship runner-up after finishing second the day before. The highlights of the final race, which was fateful for Mortara. The spectators took their breath away at the start accident. In Saturday's race at the Airport Circuit in Berlin-Tempelhof, everything went [...]
The highlights of the final race that proved fatal for Mortara. The spectators were left breathless by the accident at the start.
Everything went right for Edoardo Mortara in Saturday's race at the Airport Circuit in Berlin-Tempelhof. The Geneva native qualified fourth on the grid in the Venturi Mercedes, then showed an almost perfect race in terms of driving and strategy and finished second behind Lucas di Grassi's Audi.
More important than the podium were the 18 championship points that came with it. These moved him up from ninth to second place in the standings, as a number of previously better-placed rivals had gone away empty-handed.
Luck of the draw in the impact accident
In Sunday's final race, Mortara took eleventh place on the grid. Nyck de Vries, who was still four points ahead of him in the standings, was right behind him - but the real danger was lurking ahead.
Mitch Evans, who was the hottest candidate of the dozen or so (!) remaining title contenders, was unable to get away from third place on the grid. Because he was denied a view of the front in the starting pack, the Swiss, of all people, crashed into the rear of the Jaguar with full force.
The Swiss was able to get out of his wreckage by himself, but in the hospital the doctors found a microfracture in the fourth vertebra of his back, but it did not require any treatment.
After an interruption of around half an hour, the race was restarted. Ironically, Mortara's teammate Norman Nato took his first victory in Formula E, so the Monaco-based Venturi Racing team led by Susie Wolff still had reason to celebrate.
Only one Dutchman on Mercedes ahead of Mortara
After that, it was Edorado Mortara's turn to behave. Despite the zero, he remained second overall and can thus call himself runner-up.
Because all other title rivals of world championship leader Nyck de Vries also failed, the Dutchman became the first FIA World Champion in Formula E. The Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team also secured the title win in the team standings.
Edoardo Mortara: "It had been our goal to stay in the title fight until the last race on Sunday, which had worked out perfectly. So anything would have been possible, but I didn't have a chance anymore. I couldn't see Evans and I'm glad that he remained unharmed and that my injury didn't require surgery."
No happy ending for Sébastien Buemi
The last Formula E weekend of the seventh season also ended disappointingly for Sébastien Buemi. Although the driver from the canton of Vaud qualified for super pole in his Nissan for the first race and then took sixth place on the grid, he slipped out of the points over the course of the 38 laps, missing out by 1.4 seconds in eleventh place.
On Sunday, Buemi started eighth but was again unable to convert the pace from qualifying and thus ended up fourteenth with almost exactly the same time gap to the top as on the previous day. His teammate Oliver Rowland shone on Sunday with second place.
The 2015/16 season champion finished the first official FIA World Championship in the electric racing series in 21st position behind Nico Müller, who contested only seven of the 15 races. Buemi only finished in the points three times. Fifth place in Rome was his best result.
