Edoardo Mortara displayed a dominant drive to secure victory in Marrakesh and retakes the lead in the championship with six races remaining in the season.
The Venturi driver took the lead of the race when Antonio Felix Da Costa took his first Attack Mode within the first six laps.
On the following lap, Mortara reacted to Da Costa’s Attack Mode and dropped back to second, but this allowed the Swiss-Italian driver to have one minute and 30 seconds extra Attack Mode over the Techeetah driver.
Mortara closed up to back on Da Costa, but the Portuguese driver opted to take his second Attack Mode, which put Mortara back in the lead of the race.
However, Da Costa closed back up to Mortara, but at Turn 10 Mahindra Racing driver Oliver Rowland, who had used his Attack Modes to jump up to third place, hit Da Costa causing the Techeetah driver to get out of shape.
Sportingly, Rowland let Da Costa back through, but that gave Mortara a gap to take his second Attack Mode and remain in the lead.
The Ds Techeetah drivers of Jean-Eric Vergne and Da Costa decided to save energy after losing out on the lead, and they started to provide a late challenge to Mortara’s lead.
Vergne had two percent more energy than Da Costa, whilst he was running in third place. and Mortara, which caused the Ds Techeetah team to use team orders to switch the drivers and allow Vergne a chance to attack Mortara.
However, Vergne was not able to mount a challenge and the team opted to switch the drivers once more to allow Da Costa the chance to attack Mortara.
But Mortara had all the answers for Techeetah’s attack and secured victory ahead of Da Costa.
Mitch Evans came home in third for Jaguar Racing after Vergne had two slow laps to end the race.
Therefore, Vergne had to settle for fourth place. There was an intense battle for fifth place, which looked to be won by reigning champion Nyck De Vries who had also conserved energy to provide a late charge.
But despite De Vries being on one percent of energy, he lost out on a fifth-place finish to Lucas Di Grassi who passed him at Turn 10 on the final lap of the race despite having 0.3% of energy at the time.
De Vries came home in sixth place ahead of Jake Dennis who finished in seventh. Stoffel Vandoorne came from 20th on the grid to finish in eighth place for Mercedes. The Belgian driver did lead the championship at the start of the race.
Sam Bird finished the race in ninth place for Jaguar, and Oliver Rowland finished in tenth, after spending a bit too much energy at the start of the race.
The races are now coming thick and fast, as in two weeks’ time Formula E will visit New York, and then at the end of the month, the series will visit London.
