Formula E returns Monaco with the title fight alive again - MotorSportsTalk

MONACO – Formula E makes its return to the streets of Monaco this weekend following a year’s break with the championship fight between Sebastien Buemi and Lucas di Grassi on a knife-edge.

Monaco first played host to Formula E back in 2014 during the all-electric series’ inaugural season as Sebastien Buemi became the first man to win more than one ePrix.

Fast forward two years, and the Swiss driver now has nine victories and a championship under his belt, with his hat-trick of wins to start the 2016/17 season thrusting him to the top of the title standings.

Buemi looked unstoppable at the head of the field until the fourth round of the year in Mexico City, when Formula E’s most dramatic race to date saw ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport’s di Grassi come back into contention.

Despite suffering damage and almost going one lap down, di Grassi rolled the dice on an ambitious strategy that worked out thanks to a couple of safety car periods and some impressive energy saving to get to the end and cross the line first.

With Buemi finishing outside of the points following an off-colour weekend that ended with a 12th-place finish, di Grassi slashed his rival’s advantage in the title race to just five points.

“I watched the race a couple of times and it was difficult to believe! From inside the cockpit, there was a different perspective,” di Grassi told NBC Sports.

“I only managed to win because the team managed to do a fantastic job with the strategy call, and with fixing the rear wing at the beginning. It was a mega race, my best Formula E victory so far. I’m pretty pleased with it.”

So as it has been for all three of Formula E’s seasons so far, the stage is set for another Buemi-di Grassi barnstormer this Saturday. But the Brazilian does not believe that the championship is something to yet have in mind.

“It’s very early to be talking about the championship. We’re round five, there’s another eight to go,” di Grassi said.

“Everything can happen. To be honest, JEV is quick, other guys are quick, Nico Prost is there. We just need that one bad weekend for everything to change again. At the moment we have to focus on winning races and collecting good points and that’s it.”

For Buemi, di Grassi’s revival has not been without its fair share of good fortune.

“I don’t want to sound rude but because they made mistakes it turned out to be some luck,” Buemi said. “I mean in qualifying in Hong Kong, he had a crash and because of that he had an accident in the first lap and because of the accident and because of this there was a safety car, they tend to have a very risky strategy in Mexico and in Hong Kong and it worked out very well.

“So congratulations to them but I am not sure it will be like that every weekend, so clearly I’m going to focus on not doing mistakes myself but they have made quite a few this season already.”

The circuit used in Monaco is similar to that in Formula 1, albeit much shorter. Instead of heading up the hill at Sainte Devote, drivers take a sharp right that leads them down a straight that ordinarily acts as the escape road for the Nouvelle Chicane.

The field will rejoin at the Chicane before completing the rest of the ‘regular’ Monaco lap, heading through Tabac, Swimming Pool and Las Rascasse before crossing the line to complete a lap.

The Monaco ePrix sees the third Formula E campaign edge towards its half-way mark, with the three double-header rounds to close out the season in Berlin (June 10-11), New York (July 15-16) and Montreal (July 29-30) now making up for half of the schedule in this campaign.

Following the Monaco race, the series will head to Paris just one week later on May 20, marking its first back-to-back race weekends.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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