Edoardo Mortara was punished after chaos ended Saturday's (16) race in New York and mocked the decision, saying he "couldn't control the car while going into the wall".
The eP of New York reserved strong emotions for drivers and fans of Formula E, with two races full of stories over the last weekend. And if Edoardo Mortara landed in the United States with an 11-point lead over second place, the Swiss driver left Brooklyn with the same 11-point deficit to the new leader, Stoffel Vandoorne. And much of this is due to a penalty suffered in race 1.
The penalty suffered by Mortara almost went unnoticed amidst the chaos that took place in the first race of the weekend, which ended after several drivers were involved in accidents due to the torrential rain that fell on the circuit - which, in turn, left something to be desired in terms of runoff.
Soon after Nick Cassidy, Lucas Di Grassi and Stoffel Vandoorne crashed their cars into the wall, Mortara almost lost his direction at the same point. However, he managed to get back on track - with a broken nose - and headed for the pits, just as a yellow flag was activated across the track. The Swiss driver did not see it, took too long to respect the 50 km/h limit and was punished by 5s, dropping from fifth to ninth at the end of the race.
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"When they activated the yellow flag across the track, I couldn't see," Mortara complained. "I think they think it's possible for you to see the panel while driving at 200 km/h at the end of the straight. As soon as I saw it, I slowed down. And that was the reason why I couldn't go down to 50 km/h immediately," he admitted.
"That was an FIA decision, and we went there to try to explain to them what happened with the data," the driver said. "And I think it was very clear, but they decided to punish me. It was difficult to stay on the track, and the yellow flag came a little bit too late," he criticized.
Mortara was clearly angry with the race direction for the incident, and even mocked the decision, telling The Race portal that "I wasn't respecting the 50 km/h limit while I was spinning and going into the wall during the rain. Still, the fact is that the punishment did not take place at the place of the generalized crash, but between turns 7 and 9 - that is, on his way to the pit-lane.
With the loss of the points, the second race became even more important for Mortara. However, the driver did not expect that a brake problem would make it impossible for him to qualify. As a result, he had to start from the last row and still managed to save two points, with a 10th place and the fastest lap of the race.
"From the beginning we had a nightmare, with many problems with the brakes," Mortara lamented. "We couldn't do any laps in qualifying. I started on the last row, and I was just hoping that we could solve our brake problems during the race, which is what we did. We managed to move up from the last row to 10th place, which I think was the most we could do," he closed.