Just Electric

De Vries fights to Berlin victory in historic 1-2-3-4 for Mercedes cars

Reigning champion Nyck de Vries took a decisive victory in the second Berlin E-Prix of the weekend.

The reigning champion picked up his first win since the opening round of the season. It was a historic 1-2-3-4 for Mercedes powered cars, with the Mercedes EQ team and Venturi locking out the top four positions.

An ambitious move at turn one on the opening lap moved de Vries from third to first. The Mercedes driver had been trying to find a way past Robin Frijns, who himself was alongside pole sitter Eduardo Mortara. Mortara managed to hold off Frijns but could not stay ahead of de Vries.

De Vries was relatively unchallenged throughout the race. Mortara was able to move into the race lead when de Vries took his single Attack Mode, but the reigning champion was able to retake the position with the extra power.

While Mortara battled with those behind, de Vries pulled out a good gap at the front of the order and took the chequered flag 2.454s ahead of P2.

The Venturi duo of Mortara and Lucas Di Grassi was running an alternate Attack Mode strategy, gong much later than those around them. Mortara still had six minutes of extra power when de Vries ran out of Attack Mode. Despite dropping back to P5 when he went through the activation zones, Mortara quickly swept back up through the order. Antonio Felix da Costa in P2 put up a good defence, which only allowed de Vries to further extend his advantage, but Mortara eventually came through.

He wasn’t able to close in on de Vries, though his P2 in the race allowed him to move up to second in the championship standings, 12 points behind Stoffel Vandoorne.

It was a late charge from Vandoorne that put him in the podium paying position. He was running sixth when the Attack Mode period had ended and locked in a battle with da Costa. As they fought, the two moved up through the order together, but Vandoorne eventually held the advantage over the Techeetah driver and put di Grassi between the two of them.

Vandoorne was able to pull away from di Grassi late on but couldn’t close in on Mortara before the chequered flag.

Da Costa fell back into a battle with Oliver Rowland and Frijns, who had fallen backwards after missing the Attack Mode activation points early on. Frijns would could out of the battle on top, finishing fifth, with Da Costa beating Rowland to sixth.

Andre Lotterer fell backwards late on and ended the race eighth, ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne and Mitch Evans.

Bethonie Waring

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