Formula E
Hyderabad ePrix: How did home favourites Mahindra and Tata's Jaguar perform?
How did the locals perform in their backyard?
In a first, India witnessed Formula E action for the first time after Hyderabad ePrix came to a successful conclusion on Saturday. Amongst the 11 teams which vied for the podium were Mahindra Racing and Jaguar TCS Racing, two companies with Indian roots.
Mahindra, well, is one of India's largest automobile industries, which is slowly making fruitful inroads into the world of Formula E. Jaguar, with TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) as their title sponsor in Formula E, was bought by Ratan Tata back in 2008.
"I was closely involved with getting the Mahindra team on the grid back in 2014 when I drove for them and it's been good to see the TATA group join the party via their Jaguar brand," veteran Formula racer Karun Chandhok had said in a special column via PTI.
So, how did the locals perform in their backyard?
Qualifying
About three hours before the drivers raced through the fresh Hyderabad track, it was for them to claim their chance to do so. Unfortunately for the drivers representing Mahindra, neither could make it to the duels, and hence didn't get a chance to fight for the pole position in the grid.
Jaguar TCS, however, had something to look forward to as Mitch Evans went through all rounds of qualification to clinch pole position. His teammate in Sam Bird was handed the short end of the stick as his lap timings were removed from the record on the account of exceeding track limits. Hence, Bird had to be content with the sixth position in the grid.
Mahindra's Oliver Rowland and Lucas di Grassi settled for 10th and 19th position on the grid respectively.
Race
If the qualification was peachy for Jaguar TCS, the main race was rather horrid and forgettable for the two drivers. Bird was involved in a collision with teammate Evans, who had started the race from the front.
While Bird did apologise to Evans on the team radio, both racers ended up retiring from the Hyderabad ePrix.
For the Mahindra drivers, Rowland and de Grassi finished sixth and 14th respectively, after Sebastien Buemi of Vision Racing saw his position get demoted from third to right down to 15th after getting penalised.
In terms of points collected after the Hyderabad race, Jaguar TCS got three points (Bird- 0, Evans- 3), whereas Mahindra pipped them with eight points (di Grassi-0, Rowland- 8).
