In their second season at Formula E, Mercedes swept both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles. With a four-point gap over Jaguar Racing, the team came out on top and closed with a flourish after Nick de Vries did the same for the individual race.
Despite the fact that the second driver of the organization, Stofel Vandoorne, finished ninth, his performance on the last E-Prix held in Berlin was essential for the collective title.
Although it was not a good year for Vandoorne, who finished second in campaign six, Team Principal Ian James praised the Belgian’s performance. “He really had the worst part of the failures this season, but if I look at what he has achieved during the season, and if I look especially at his qualifying performance in Berlin, he won the Team Championship for us there.”
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He acknowledged Vandoorne’s work because all the spotlight, and rightly so, has been on reigning monarch Nick de Vries. “Stoffel deserves recognition because without those four points, it would have been a very different story. It was an excellent commitment on his part,” James emphasized.
Obstacle Season
Although Mercedes solved many of the operational errors that ruined their 2019-20 season, with De Vries significantly more affected last year, they still endured considerable changes to their competitiveness through the middle half of the campaign that just ended.
De Vries (two) and Vandoorne (one) scored wins at each of the first three double-header races, but failed to return to winning ways, including five non-points results in a six race series.
On the situation, James commented: “We fought to the end. Do I want to repeat that next year? Absolutely, on terms of a double win, but gosh, I want to do it a lot earlier in the season, in a much simpler way.”
“We’ll have that big honesty in terms of going over the things we didn’t do right. We’ve already had those discussions and they started just the day after finishing in Berlin,” the Mercedes boss revealed.
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Speculation lingers that De Vries could move to Williams for the 2022 Formula 1 Season, if starter George Russell replaces Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes.
That would leave Vandoorne at the head of Mercedes’ Formula E driver lineup for what will be the manufacturer’s final season in the all-electric series.
However, James and team CEO Toto Wolff are leading plans to find a buyer so he can continue independently for the Gen3 era.
Written by I Jhonattan González
