In a weekend that saw the championship order mixed up, Nick Cassidy dominated the first race of a crazy double-header in New York City, while Antonio Felix da Costa took his first 2022 victory in race two. Unfortunately, the first race was marred by a sudden downpour that resulted in multiple cars aquaplaning off the circuit in a dangerous fashion. The race directors subsequently stopped the race despite there still being seven minutes left. Fortunately, a dry race two let the drivers have a far more standard race to catch their breath.
It was Envision Racing's Nick Cassidy that grabbed pole on Saturday afternoon after an excellent display of pace throughout. He beat the Mercedes championship contender Stoffel Vandoorne by just 0.008 seconds. Meanwhile, championship leader Edoardo Mortara started down in ninth, with rivals Mitch Evans and Jean-ric Vergne qualifying down in P14 and P16, respectively.
Cassidy got away confidently, while Vandoorne struggled and subsequently dropped to fourth at Turn 1 behind both Lucas Di Grassi and Sbastien Buemi. Cassidy's Envision teammate Robin Frijns took advantage of a poor start from Pascal Wehrlein and moved up to P5 from seventh on the grid. Evans and Vergne were caught in a sandwich at Turn 6 that resulted in the two-time Formula E Champion being spun around and ending up at the back of the field, cruelly capping off their poor grid positions. While Evans fought back up to P11, neither of his title rivals ended up scoring points.
After several laps, Mortara took the jump and activated his first Attack Mode from eighth, losing a place to Jake Dennis in the process. Next up, both Frijns (P5) and Wehrlein (P6) activated their first Attack Modes, with Wehrlein coming off worse. Frijns had impressively held his ground and was on the charge but Wehrlein lost two places, dropping down to eighth, and was followed up by the leaders taking their turn to activate Attack Mode. Only Di Grassi did the opposite and took the lead. All of the top nine now had Attack Mode, except for the new race leader. Cassidy was second, with Buemi third, while Frijns had moved ahead of Vandoorne to fourth.
With Di Grassi being the last to take his first Attack Mode of the front runners, he successfully held off Buemi and took his place back in second. Wehrlein had done a good job retaking the positions that he had lost from Attack Mode, moving back up to sixth. At the front, Di Grassi was now looking to use his extra power and pressure Cassidy. Vandoorne was doing the same to Frijns in an attempt to retake fourth, and with the Dutchman losing his Attack Mode, the Belgian moved back ahead.
After Cassidy had successfully held off Di Grassi's advances, it seemed as though the Kiwi was quicker in the fast corners but struggling in the slow ones compared to the Brazilian. Nyck De Vries' second Attack Mode allowed Mortara to move up to ninth, while Frijns dropped to P7 after his second activation. Wehrlein had consequently risen to fifth. De Vries quickly made his way back past Mortara but was visibly using up much more energy than his Swiss rival. By the halfway stage, Mortara had the most energy remaining of any driver in the top ten as a result of efficiently saving throughout the first half of the race.
Buemi and Wehrlein took their final Attack Mode, both dropping a single position each to P4 and P6 respectively. Meanwhile, De Vries continued his charge with his extra power and overtook Dennis for seventh. Cassidy pushed to create a gap at the head of the field, taking his Attack Mode with just under 24 minutes remaining. He came out nose-to-tail between Di Grassi and Vandoorne in second. The Envision driver decided to conserve his energy rather than retake the lead. Di Grassi took the opportunity to activate his final Attack Mode but came out in P3 behind both Cassidy and Vandoorne.
Vandoorne still had to use his final activation but was holding up Di Grassi and reducing his chance of fighting for victory with Cassidy. Meanwhile, Frijns in fifth was holding off the quicker Porsche of Wehrlein. With his final Attack Mode, Vandoorne finally released Di Grassi. Now all of the top three had Attack Mode, but with varying degrees of time remaining. Cassidy was first to run out, but having built a gap to Di Grassi behind, managed to hold the lead. Next, it was Di Grassi's turn to run out of Attack Mode, with Vandoorne now having the chance to push. With an excellent use of Fan Boost, Vandoorne made his move down the inside of Turn 6 and took second place.
At this point, with Mortara down in P9 and Vandoorne second, the Belgian was now leading the championship. However, that wasn't enough and with 15 minutes remaining, Vandoorne wanted the win. Meanwhile, Nissan's Sbastien Buemi was having a strong race, but so was Envision's Robin Frijns. The Dutchman had followed patiently for a few laps but made the pass for fourth place. Vandoorne's attack on the lead meanwhile hadn't gone to plan and before long he was back in the sights of Di Grassi. The Venturi driver made a lunge into Turn 1 that resulted in Vandoorne going wide to avoid contact, however out of nowhere Frijns stole P3 and Vandoorne dropped to fourth ahead of Buemi.
Further down in ninth, Edoardo Mortara was also waiting patiently before taking his last Attack Mode. This paid off massively, as the Swiss driver rose four places with his extra power, ending up directly behind Vandoorne in fifth. This rise to P5, combined with Vandoorne's descent, now gave Mortara the championship lead back. All of a sudden with just 12 minutes left, rain began to fall; adding another layer of chaos to an otherwise already entertaining finish.
Within minutes, the rain had gone from a gentle mist on the visor of the drivers' helmets to a full-on downpour. This all came to a head with Race Director Scott Elkins bringing out a Full Course Yellow as a result of the worsening conditions; however, it seemed that it wasn't soon enough. Heavy rain caused race leader Cassidy, as well as Di Grassi, Vandoorne and Mortara, to aquaplane off the track. A serious collision at Turn 6 between those leaders resulted in the Red Flag. After minutes of consultation, Scott Elkins decided not to restart the race and have the final results be the classification from the previous lap.
As a result, despite his car being completely crushed, Envision's Nick Cassidy was the victor. This is the first win in his current two-year Formula E career, after having scored two P2 finishes and a pole last season. Di Grassi's second place is his best performance of the season, and Frijns rounded off the podium with a surprising Envision 1-3.
One day later, there was a far more standard race in dry conditions where da Costa led from pole to the flag. Vandoorne again was in the hunt throughout, but late-race yellow flags prevented his chance to pass the leader to take the win. The DS Techeetah may feel lucky to have won with his car's energy running low in the closing laps while Vandoorne still had plenty to attack with.
Behind the lead two, Mitch Evans took a well-earned P3 finish. An earlier collision with de Vries had him running in fifth place and playing catch up, but the Kiwi knuckled down and fought past Alex Sims to recover positions. Evans and de Vries also lost plenty of time when they hit a road bump on the approach to Turn 6, with Evan's slide responsible for his earlier lost time, while de Vries's allowed Evans back past on his way to P3.
Elsewhere, Cassidy couldn't make it two wins from two races in New York after he received a penalty for taking a new battery after his race one crash and was classified in P16. Mortara took the final point position with a P10 finish, but only thanks to the incident that caused the yellow flags, which stymied Vandoorne's chance of winning. Jean-Eric Vergne, Lucas di Grassi, and Oliver Askew had the end of their race at Turn 6 with three laps to go, handing Mortara positions and a solitary point for his championship.
Vandoorne is now the championship leader ahead of Mortara after his P2 finish in race two. His lead was furthered following a post-race five-second time penalty that punished the Venturi driver for exceeding the maximum speed allowed under Full Course Yellow conditions in race one to make all of Mortara's late overtakes were in vain, changing his P5 to a P9. As a result, 11 points separate Vandoorne from Mortara as they leave the NYC double-header and gear up for London at the end of the month.
