Drivers' Championship
Jean-Éric Vergne: #25 Renault Z.E. 17 (198 points)
What did I write before the season: Vergne has been quick every year he has been in Formula E and with three different teams. Techeetah has the same powertrain as Renault e.Dams but I think the team will be off of its sister team and Vergne will be somewhere in the middle of the top ten in the championship.
How wrong was it: Vergne won four times, stood on the podium six times, finished in the top five 11 times and scored points in every race to take the championship with a race to spare, oh and one of the victories was the finale, which he could have skipped to celebrate France's World Cup victory with endless amounts champagne but instead he got in the car and held off Lucas di Grassi. You cannot ask of much more from a driver.
Lucas di Grassi: #1 Audi e-tron FE04 (144 points)
What did I write before the season: He has been a title contender all three seasons and I don't expect that to change. He will win a few races but di Grassi has been known for having a few races go against him even when he is the fastest one out there.
How wrong was it: This season was a disaster until spring and then di Grassi bloomed. His final seven results were second, second, second, second, first, first and second. It was too little too late but di Grassi is wasting his time in Formula E. Unfortunately he has drunk the Kool-Aid and this is his home now.
Sam Bird: #2 DS Virgin DSV-03 (143 points)
What did I write before the season: Bird remains consistently quick but not quick enough to win the championship. He will get a victory or two but he will have days where he can't crack the top five.
How wrong was it: Bird won twice but he was regularly in the top five. The only bad news is when Bird had to be at the front of the field he wasn't and it cost him in the closing rounds in Berlin and New York.
Sébastien Buemi: #9 Renault Z.E. 17 (125 points)
What did I write before the season: Buemi will go head-to-head with di Grassi for the championship because that is what those two do. He has an aggressive side and it will win a handful of races but it might beat him once or twice.
How wrong was it: Wrong! Buemi never really factored in the championship discussion and he didn't win a race and he didn't really put a wheel wrong. His lone retirement was an energy issue. It was still a really good season but not good enough.
Daniel Abt: #66 Audi e-tron FE04 (120 points)
What did I write before the season: Abt has been consistent but has struggled to beat his teammate. He will continue to do a solid job but do nothing fancy.
How wrong was it: Abt won twice and carried Audi Sport Abt for the first half of the season. Two victories, four total podium finishes and eight points finishes is a stellar season and the best for the German yet.
Felix Rosenqvist: #19 Mahindra M4Electro (96 points)
What did I write before the season: The Swede will break up the Buemi-di Grassi party and Rosenqvist will win a few races. He could take the championship lead at some point and if he does it could be game over.
How wrong was it: He won twice and he did lead the championship but unfortunately he tossed away a few races and if it weren't for those bad days in Mexico City and Rome the championship might have locked entirely different at the top.
Mitch Evans: #20 Jaguar I-Type II (68 points)
What did I write before the season: Evans will be close to equal to his teammate and he too will have a few races where he ends up in contention for podium finishes.
How wrong was it: Well, Evans finished on the podium in the second race of the season and he was marginally better than his teammate all season.
André Lotterer: #18 Renault Z.E. 17 (64 points)
What did I write before the season: The German enters a new series and results will be hard to come by at the start but things will get better as the season goes on.
How wrong was it: After not scoring in the first three races and only scoring once in the first six races (albeit it a second in a Techeetah 1-2 finish at Santiago), he closed the season with six consecutive points finishes. I believe I had that.
Nelson Piquet, Jr.: #3 Jaguar I-Type II (51 points)
What did I write before the season: The Brazilian will get solid results and be in the back half of the top ten in the championship with Piquet, Jr., challenging for podium finishes every now and then.
How wrong was it: He finished ninth in the championship and finished fourth three times. That is back half of the top ten in the championship and that is challenging for podium finishes every now and then.
Oliver Turvey: #16 NextEV NIO Sport 003 (46 points)
What did I write before the season: Turvey is the sleeper pick. He was fastest at the Valencia test and perhaps he could create a four-way battle with Buemi, di Grassi and Rosenqvist. He will win a race and set a career-best championship finish but reliability issues could cost him a title opportunity.
How wrong was it: That testing pace never carrier over. Turvey had a good car but not a great car. He never was a threat for the championship. His best result was second in Mexico City.
Nick Heidfeld: #23 Mahindra M4Electro (42 points)
What did I write before the season: Heidfeld will be slower than his teammate but the German will pick up points and likely end up on the podium at least once. Will it be the top step? He is due.
How wrong was it: He finished third in the first race of the season, scored in half the races and was 54 points off his teammate. I got that one correct.
Maro Engel: #5 Venturi VM200-FE-03 (31 points)
What did I write before the season: Engel will be have a difficult second season and struggle to break a double-digit points total.
How wrong was it: He scored 31 points and scored in half the races. Wrong!
Edoardo Mortara: #4 Venturi VM200-FE-03 (29 points)
What did I write before the season: Mortara will challenge to be the best of the two Venturi drivers but he will not finish in the top half of the championship.
How wrong was it: Twenty-five drivers raced in Formula E this season and Mortara finished 13th, dead center, 12 above and 12 below. He didn't finish in the top half. I believe I had that.
Jérôme d'Ambrosio: #7 Penske EV-2 (27 points)
What did I write before the season: The Belgian does better than his teammate on a consistent basis but he does not make it back into the top ten of the championship.
How wrong was it: He scored nearly double the points of his teammates and he finished 14th in the championship. Nailed it.
António Félix da Costa: #28 Andretti ATEC-03 (20 points)
What did I write before the season: The Portuguese driver will not struggle as much as he did last year but he will miss out on the top ten in the championship.
How wrong was it: He scored in four races this season over once last season, he doubled the number of points he scored last season and finished 15th in the championship. I would say I got this spot on.
Alex Lynn: #36 DS Virgin DSV-03 (17 points)
What did I write before the season: Lynn will have a few good results but there will be days where DS Virgin Racing won't have the speed and he will be happy just to score points.
How wrong was it: He started out really well, scoring in five of the first six races but he ended the year with six consecutive finishes outside the points.
José María López: #6 Penske EV-2 (14 points)
What did I write before the season: Nothing... because he wasn't the original driver of the car.
How wrong was it: Though he did come in and run the final ten races of the season. Dragon Racing has taken multiple steps back as more manufactures have gotten involved and the restrictions loosened.
Tom Dillmann: #4 Venturi VM200-FE-03 (12 points)
What did I write before the season: Nothing... because he wasn't the original driver and was substitute when Edoardo Mortara had DTM duty.
How wrong was it: He had a competitive first race in New York in what was a big improvement over previous seasons for Venturi.
Nicolas Prost: #8 Renault Z.E. 17 (8 points)
What did I write before the season: Like Abt, Prost has been solid but better than the German. Prost will consistently score points but always but on the periphery of the championship picture.
How wrong was it: This was wrong and surprisingly wrong. He scored points in only four races this season and his best finish was eighth in the second race of the season. Prost wasn't as good as Buemi but he could be competitive and with the Renault Z.E. 17 powertrain responsible for the champion's car and three drivers in the top ten it is surprising Prost wasn't one of them.
Tom Blomqvist: #27 Andretti ATEC-03 (4 points)
What did I write before the season: Nothing... because he was replaced before the season opener by Kamui Kobayashi only to have that reversed before the second round of the season.
How wrong was it: He did eventually get in the car. He didn't set the world on fire. Let's see how the BMW partnership goes in 2018-19.
Luca Filippi: #68 NextEV NIO Sport 003 (1 point)
What did I write before the season: Filippi is one of the rookies and he will be off his teammate for the entire season. He will score points but on a semi-regular basis.
How wrong was it: He scored one point in the first race of the season and never scored again. He wasn't close to his teammate Turvey so that is right but the semi-regular points scorer was wrong.
Stéphane Sarrazin: #27 Andretti ATEC-03 (0 points)
What did I write before the season: Nothing... because he replaced Blomqvist for the final three rounds.
How wrong was it: The Andretti Formula E program is bad. That is putting it nicely. Though the Frenchman had Formula E experience he could only do so much with the equipment given to him.
Ma Qing Hua: #68 NextEV NIO Sport 003/#16 NextEV NIO Sport 003 (0 points)
What did I write before the season: Nothing... because who could have seen him returning to Formula E?
How wrong was it: He replaced Filippi in Paris and substituted for an injured Turvey in the second New York race. He didn't do much.
Kamui Kobayashi: #27 Andretti ATEC-03 (0 points)
What did I write before the season: Kobayashi is the newest addition to the grid as Tom Blomqvist was announced for this seat before sponsorship-related issues forced the switch to Kobayashi. He has a history of jumping into unfamiliar cars and finding results but Andretti has never produced a highly competitive powertrain.
How wrong was it: As covered above, he did one round, scored zero points and was gone before we noticed he was ever there.
Neel Jani: #6 Penske EV-2 (0 points)
What did I write before the season: The Swiss driver enters having last raced single-seaters in 2011 in Superleague Formula and I think he will score some points but will have more races where he does not score points than he does.
How wrong was it: His Formula E career ended after one round and scored no points.
Final Thoughts on the Season
It is kind of surprising a customer team won this championship when there are manufactures already in Formula E and many more about to enter. For three years we were used to Audi Sport Abt vs. Renault e.dams and for year four there appeared to be no reason to expect any different. Then di Grassi and Buemi got off to slow starts and here we are with Vergne on top.
Audi Sport Abt did end up winning the Teams' Championship over Techeetah but Techeetah took the Teams' Championship lead after the fourth race of the season and led until the closing laps of the final race of the season.
A Few Thoughts on the Future
The 2018-19 season will reflect a more traditional motorsports event. The cars swaps will be gone. Races will be 45 minutes plus one lap in length. BMW partners will Andretti Autosport, Mercedes-Benz starts its two-year transition into the series in partnership with Venturi and Nissan takes over for Renault.
Next season is tentatively expected to expand to 12 rounds and 13 races with Marrakesh, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Zürich and New York all returning and Monaco returning with its biennial rotation with the Historic Grand Prix. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Sanya, China join the schedule with a to be announced event still on the schedule.
Through four years I am still processing Formula E. We all are. In year one I viewed the series and electric motorsports the same way I viewed motorsports at the dawn of the 20th century: As something new that would develop over time and should not be compared to its much older brother. Each year the cars got a bit faster and there have been good races. The race format might have been foreign but there were bits of familiarity and it wasn't too strange once you could accept the differences.
In this first era change it will be interesting to see if the elimination of the car swap turns Formula E races into sprints. Drivers only have so much power but as manufactures get more involved and start developing their own batteries and engines races should start to move away from efficiency and into speed. Cars should be able to go longer. Races should not be about if a car can complete the 45 minutes but how much mileage it can complete in 45 minutes.
That change from efficiency to distance could be the next hurdle the series has to clear to attract existing motorsports fans. At that point it will be a competition between the manufactures to produce the better car and while it is currently great that teams were able to complete 102 kilometers in an hour at Brooklyn last week that should not be good enough. It should become a competition where BMW can complete 125 kilometers in 45 minutes and know the car has enough life to go another 50 kilometers at that pace for another 15 minutes. And in turn Audi, Nissan and all the other manufactures should be striving to be completing more miles in the race time. Formula E could be onto something really exciting and intriguing but it has to shoot higher.
There is something that gnaws at me about Formula E. The best way I can describe it is the smugness of the series. That it is the only one that cares about the world and that it is inevitable that everyone will just start watching it. Even worse is it seems there is only one voice, Alejandro Agag's, and everyone else who speaks repeats what the Spaniard spews. Formula E needs a dissident. It needs somebody, a driver, a team principal, a reporter with clout in the series (which I doubt there are any because it is the 21st century and Formula E would not let its version of Robin Miller survive) to stir the pot and challenge the series to be better.
From the start I have said Formula E is a 21st century series but the deeper we get the more learn that the 21st century doesn't like anything. Except itself. The one thing that has spread is narcissism but narcissism isn't what this series can live on. It needs people and it needs fans that invest emotionally, not only financially in the series. The first four years were all about attracting investors and the series needs someone to foot the bills but how long can the series exist racing in front of a few thousand people standing along a fence in an urban setting?
It was only year four, the series is still a toddler but in ten years will there be 35-year-olds heading to races with seven-year-old sons and daughters? Will there be 18-year-olds who were hooked at the age of eight and can't miss a race? Formula E has a very impersonal feel to it. It shows up to a city for a day and leaves when it is over. None of the races have roots in the ground. While there will be eight carry over events next season the year after that could feature nine new venues and no one would shed a tear over the departing venues. The series comes and goes. It doesn't care about any of the markets it is in and it seems Formula E is fine with that.
I feel Formula E will one day have to get serious about making connection with the places it races and it will need go-to events. It was not practical to expect Formula E to have its Indianapolis 500, British Grand Prix, Bathurst 1000 or Southern 500 start to emerge but will any of the current events take hold and become events the series cannot live without and in turn will there be areas that cannot live without Formula E? It doesn't seem likely... at least not in this current environment with the current leadership. In ten years time it could be very different.
