Double points finish - for Maserati MSG Racing in Mexico City

2025-01-13

After a qualifying session on a track that is known to be challenging to overtake on, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jake Hughes made impressive progress through the field to bring Maserati MSG Racing their first double-points finish of the season. Tyres were the talk of qualifying, with both Jake and Stoffel struggling to keep them at optimum temperature to extract maximum performance. Stoffel also had a drying track to contend with after rain hit the circuit for the morning practice session, making the right time to go for his flying lap hit or miss. The low qualifying positions caused some concern for Maserati MSG Racing going into the EPrix as the Mexico City circuit is notoriously limited in overtaking opportunities, but this didn’t dampen either driver or the team’s prospects going into the race. The team knew that executing the perfect strategy and having a clean race could lead to a double-points finish.

It was a good start from Jake and Stoffel, both improving on their start position off the line. At the end of lap two, the duo was running 12th and 13th, Stoffel ahead, and the team were strategizing how to use the tandem to obtain maximum points at the end of the 36 laps. Jake was lucky to not be tangled in another first lap incident as Lola Yamaha’s Zane Maloney tagged the side of his Maserati Tipo Folgore. He managed to continue racing with limited affects from the contact. Stoffel got stuck behind Mahindra’s struggling Nyck De Vries which limited his advancement through the pack. It forced Maserati MSG Racing to reassess expectations on where they were targeting to be when the chequered flag fell.

With track advantage, Stoffel took his first Attack Mode a lap ahead of Jake, both cars activating for two minutes. They were some of the last in their pack to take the Attack, meaning that they could gain positions lost to end the first Attack period just outside of the points. The entire pack were lapping similarly and with so few overtaking opportunities there was little movement outside of the Attack Mode periods. Importantly for Maserati MSG Racing, they got a sighter into which teams they had a pace advantage on after just two races, and who their closest rivals are. The first of two Safety Cars came out with under ten laps to go when Lola Yamaha teammates Malony and Lucas Di Grassi came together, seeing Maloney in the barriers. Unfortunately, the Safety Car came out whilst Jake had under two minutes of his final six-minute Attack Mode active, Stoffel having four minutes of his, and so lost Jake the opportunity to get comfortably in the points before his Attack expired.

Stoffel was a little luckier; with the Safety Car being relatively short he still had two and a half minutes of Attack when the track went green. Being the only one in the middle of the top ten remaining in Attack Mode, Stoffel pushed to make sure he was in a strong position to hold onto his well-earned points at the chequered flag. Jake was P10 when the second Safety Car came out – a very similar incident but this time Jaguar’s Mitch Evans was its victim – with three of the four cars behind him still to take their last Attack Modes. With the gap he had at the time, Envision’s Robin Frijns and Jaguar’s Nick Cassidy weren’t too much concern as they only had two minutes of Attack remaining, but McLaren’s Taylor Barnard had four minutes and was a threat to Jake’s first points of the season.