Robin Frijns finished ninth in the first Formula E race on the streets of Montreal on Saturday, while his teammate António Félix da Costa finished out of the points. In the last race of the 2016-2017 season on Sunday neither driver was able to score points.
Both drivers moved up from their qualifying positions early in the race on Saturday. Both pitted when the i8 safety car came out just before the halfway point. After that Frijns moved into the points, finishing ninth, while Félix da Costa spun after he and Nelson Piquet Jr. made contact. He went on to finish fifteenth.
Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport’s Lucas di Grassi won the race, taking the points lead from Renault e.dams’ Sebastien Buemi, who had a difficult race that included a grid penalty and a tap from another racer as he was leaving the pits. Buemi was also disadvantaged in the points chase because he had missed the Brooklyn rounds because of a conflict with his Toyota WEC ride. While Buemi finished fourth on the track, he was disqualified after the race because his car was underweight.
In race two neither Amlin Andretti racer had the pace needed to break into the points; Frijns finished thirteenth and Félix da Costa finished fifteenth. Jean-Eric Vergne, driving for the Techeetah Renault team, took his first win, while di Grassi won the title with a seventh-place finish. Buemi, who had been caught up in a lap one incident, finished eleventh.
BMW will continue to partner with Amlin Andretti; it is developing a powertrain for the car that will come on line in the 2018-2019 season. Manufacturer momentum in the all-electric Formula E continues to grow; around the time of the Brooklyn race Mercedes announced that it would exit DTM and begin to run in Formula E, and just before the Montreal race Porsche announced that it would end its LMP1 effort in WEC and turn to Formula E.
Autosport.com indicates that Frijns, who races for Audi in Blancpain GT, is concerned that he may lose his Amlin Andretti seat. Autosport says that BMW factory driver Alexander Sims could be a candidate for the seat; their story also mentions BMW DTM racers Tom Blomqvist and Timo Glock as possible replacements.
The 2017-2018 season will begin in December in Hong Kong.—Brian S. Morgan
