Winners and losers from Formula E's Miami madness

A red flag that set up inevitable penalties for nearly a quarter of the field - including the on-the-road winner - typified another manic Formula E weekend on its first visit to Miami’s Homestead venue.

Here’s our pick of the stars and flops amid it all.

Winner - Porsche

Porsche has proved that its Gen3 Evo package is probably, across the board and on all types of tracks, the best in terms of pace and consistency. 

That it hadn't won a race so far this season before Miami was a bit of an anomaly to say the least but Pascal Wehrlein's eighth Formula E win ended all that.

At Homestead it all came right - although it was a huge rollercoaster of emotions that included some luck, both good and bad, and some seriously tight risk management.

Porsche's strategy from third on the grid for Antonio Felix da Costa and ninth for Wehrlein (compromised by Sam Bird inadvertently kicking up dirt and upsetting the Porsche) worked a treat in the race and, up to the safety car, it felt like a comfortable 1-2 was going to play out.

Wehrlein joined his team-mate at the front after he "progressed with the attack mode into the leading group" according to team chief Florian Modlinger, who was up to that point relishing the plan.

That was when the two cars worked together efficiently, and it felt like a clear and deserved da Costa win with the added bonus of a Wehrlein second – the perfect scenario for the team in the circumstances.

But the Buemi-Evans-Hughes-Guenther chicane shambles had other ideas. Now the control Porsche had felt threatened.

"We know exactly the risk that if a late safety car comes, you cannot take the attack mode anymore," added Modlinger.

"Pascal had 4 and 4 mins strategy and Antonio had 2 and 6 mins. This means we were coming to our own limit [of risk], and we took it."

In the middle of that six minute usage when the safety car came out and then with no attack mode left at all after the red flag, da Costa was stuffed. The misfortune was harsh, but there was also fortune because all those with six minutes of attack mode left for the restart wouldn't have time to take it and would face inevitable penalties.

Edoardo Mortara was the only threat to da Costa not achieving a podium once the penalties took effect because he had parity on attack modes used, but the Mahindra was swiftly rebuffed.

Right now that podium will feel a bit hollow for da Costa. But in the bigger picture of the championship fight it could prove to be a real catch.

Wehrlein naturally played it safe in the last few corners, knowing that the attacking Norman Nato would be penalised, and it gave him and Porsche much momentum heading into a crucial month of May when six races in four weeks will shape who will be in best position to take the big prizes come London in July.

"Now it's an additional motivation to go in this tough month, May, where we have three double-headers, six races in one month, where everybody needs to deliver," said Modlinger.

"Full focus. No mistakes, making sure that the package works on the different track characteristics. This will be key for this intense moment of the season."

Right now, Porsche feels like it is grabbing the favourite tag and wearing it as a badge of pride as the title stakes start to get serious.

Loser - Oliver Rowland

It was a very atypical and tepid performance from Oliver Rowland in Miami, so much so that it stood out more than usual.

Although not offering it as an overt excuse, Rowland did confide to The Race that he had been ill on the run up to the Miami weekend with a stomach bug. He's made of stern stuff so that, combined with a false start in FP1, was ultimately a sign of what was to come. 

His trouble started when a brake-by-wire issue compromised him in that first practice run. It was a legacy of not being able to bleed a new system in properly after the shakedown session was scrapped due to a cloudburst.

That seemed to set the tone a bit because after an indecisive qualifying run to 16th, the usually confident Rowland seemed to be second guessing himself in the race. 

"I was going to take 4 and 4 [minutes of attack mode] and I changed my mind just as I went for it," he told The Race.

Had he stuck to his original plan and taken that option instead of the two and six minutes then Rowland would have salvaged some decent points.

Even a fortunate promotion to 10th and a point seemed like a reward not really deserved after a bit of a lacklustre weekend for one of Formula E's most impressive performers over the last 12 months.

But here's the thing. He still leads the championship. How crucial could that point be come his home race in London at the end of July?

Winner - Norman Nato

As The Race rationalised earlier this week, Nato had endured a difficult start to his second chapter at Nissan and a whole lot of his difficulties had been a combination of ill luck, team errors and some missteps from him too.

Nato and The Race had a constructive discussion about it all in the paddock on Friday, with the Nissan driver positively and rationally stating his case that it would only be a matter of time before his luck changed.

He was dead right in one sense. And the fact he proved it so emphatically with a brilliant first ever Formula E pole position and a ‘moral victory' in some respects, was not only a great feelgood story but also in many respects just reward for one of racing's more pleasant characters and plucky professionals.

He was the only Nissan driver to make it through to the duels and he did it in a clean and crisp way, executing his duels against Lucas di Grassi, Robin Frijns and Jake Dennis impeccably. 

But in classic Nato style there was also a cruel twist with the penalty for not being able to complete the six minutes of attack mode.

Mario Andretti once said that Chris Amon's luck was so bad that if he went into the undertaking business, people would stop dying. Nato's misfortune sometimes seems to be the modern equivalent.

Yet, the bigger picture is that Nato simply had a stellar weekend of pace and consistency that just happened to go unrewarded. Getting just 11 points will sting right now given he could have won, but it at least gives him a decent platform to now shine at Monaco, a track he historically excels at.

So, did he feel like the moral winner at Homestead?

"It doesn't really matter and I'm just really happy with what I've shown today," he told The Race. 

"I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the car. Especially in the race. I'm just really pleased with what we're doing and I can't wait now to be in Monaco. 

"Maybe the luck will finally turn around and I can jump on this podium."

Loser - Jaguar

It seems inconceivable that Jaguar, a paragon of big points scoring virtue, exponent of wins and podiums for so long, hasn't scored at all in three of this season's five race weekends so far.

But that is what happened at Homestead after a messy race as Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy attempted to overcome a very difficult qualifying period in which they just couldn't get comfortable on temperatures of their Hankook tyres.

Those misadventures were extended into the race when Cassidy got a three strikes and out penalty for track limits violations at Turn 12, receiving a five second penalty that dropped him to 15th and continued the awful start to his second Jaguar season.

Just "not getting the tyre pressure quite right" was James Barclay's assessment to The Race but Jaguar was  in good company too as DS Penske and McLaren endured similar difficulties.

"You saw the same with DS Penske," added Barclay.

"They've got a very strong group in that area and they really struggled today. The things that maybe didn't work at other tracks did work here, so it's slightly counterintuitive and that caught some of us out."

Evans's race ended with the red flag triggering shunt in which he was essentially an innocent party. That and Cassidy's woes left the Jaguar garage feeling very flat after the race.

"Yes, it hurts," said Barclay.

"You want to literally reset and go again, and that's honestly where we are.

"We're pleased the races are now coming thick and fast because we want to just get cracking on and get racing again because we do think we have the ingredients that are there.

"Are we the strongest everywhere? Absolutely not. But have we made gains? Yes. Should we be in the running? Yes, absolutely."

Winner - Lola Yamaha Abt

Genuine feelgood stories in racing happen very rarely in motorsport. But one that involves a previously defunct legendary British constructor being back on a world championship podium in just its fifth race! Well, that is a genuine racing fairytale.

Taking full credit for that are di Grassi and the Lola Yamaha Abt team which had, as expected, endured a tough catch-up start to its life in Formula E.

Most of the bugs were banished at a recent Monteblanco test and there was already a feeling that real pace was now on the agenda after a few false starts. 

Di Grassi was excellent in qualifying and got the Lola colours into a duel for the first time with a committed second-fastest performance in his group, beaten only by an acrobatic Frijns.

On paper the race brought good fortune with other penalties but to lay that on too thick would be doing di Grassi and his team a massive disservice because he was quick and decisive throughout.

What really shone was the communication between di Grassi and his engineer Markus Michelberger. During the red flag period the two were like a pair of perfectly tuned satellites inputting what the opposition were doing and where the opportunities lay.

For di Grassi this was a nice boast after a very lean and a very frustrating last two and a half seasons in Formula E. It was his first podium since his miraculous Mexico City podium with Mahindra in January 2023 and it showed in the aftermath of the race when he was rightly and wholeheartedly embraced by both his on-site family and his side of the Lola Yamaha Abt garage.

"I thought I was about to black out," said Lola owner Till Bechtolsheimer.

"The team were just very professional, gave Lucas the information he needed, so that he knew which cars he didn't have to fight and that he should leave a wide berth to because they were going to get a penalty.

"It feels like a win on many levels. It's a huge milestone."

The only slight downer was that Zane Maloney couldn't keep his first Formula E point after his 10th place was snatched away by a penalty handed out for not stopping his car completely after shortcutting the Turn 10-11 complex.

What can the team achieve this year? Should it get anywhere in the region of 30-40 points it will be a successful season. With these 18, those aims and objectives might have to be reassessed now.

Loser - Stellantis

This was the first time ever that the Stellantis group (DS Penske and Maserati MSG) came away empty handed from a race weekend since it started competing with two brands in January 2023.

It was nothing short of a disastrous weekend in which even the usually bulletproof Jean-Eric Vergne made what looked like rookie mistakes in both practice and the race with random grassy excursions. The Stellantis cars just couldn't get a groove going on the multiple quirks of the low grip aspects of the track. 

Vergne's DS Penske team-mate Maximilian Guenther ended up as a victim of the chicane shunt, while Maserati MSG couldn't exploit one of Stoffel Vandoorne's best ever qualifying performances into a point after his second attack mode was washed away by the red flag.