CASSIDY MONACO TAKES CHAMPIONSHIP LEAD IN

By RICHARD ALVIN

Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy won a punchy Formula E race in the Principality, which finished under the safety car.

Cassidy’s win, coming from ninth on the grid, also means that he takes the Formula E points lead, in what was the first lead change at the top of the standings since the second round in Diriyah.

On a track that is famously difficult to overtake on there were 54 overtakes in the first 9 laps of the 29 lap race.

A Nissan powertrain 1-2-3 had held at the start, in the same position of the qualifying results with Jake Hughes leading for McLaren over Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz and Norman Nato, but the front pack was predictably jumbled as most rushed to get their two attack mode activations out of the way before the halfway point.

As that halfway point was reached, form man Cassidy was sat up in first courtesy of an aggressive early charge, him and the fellow Jaguar of Mitch Evans pacing the race from up front.

Evans was told around that time to avoid overtaking Cassidy but on lap 21 of 29 he was given the command to attack the green Envision machine.

Just a lap later the safety car was triggered by a full-course yellow following the damaged Maserati of Maximilian Guenther being left parked up at Massenet.

Guenther had tried to work his way around the damaged NIO 333 of Dan Ticktum for sixth – Ticktum having crunched up his front wing against Fenestraz’s Nissan moments before – but was caught out by a Beau Rivage block from the Briton and left with a wrecked car.

The restart soon followed, and with the safety car period proving insufficient for the planned 29-lap race distance to be added to, it set up an effectively flat out run to the finish.