Cassidy loses championship lead despite 'really fast car'

Nick Cassidy has lost the lead of the drivers' championship to Pascal Wehrlein after a frustrating Tokyo E-Prix, which he made up 11 places in.

The New Zealander had looked good during free practice and initially progressed into the duels, however, the Jaguar driver saw his best lap deleted.

Cassidy's final lap in the group stage was sensationally deleted by the FIA, with the following reason having been given:

"Torque at the rear wheels did not respect the homologated primary throttle pedal map, giving the torque during lap 7," stated the FIA.

As a result, Cassidy started in P19 and did superbly to recover to eighth, although it was not enough to stop Wehrlein taking the lead of the standings.

"The team did a really great job today and we had a really fast car," said Cassidy. "We made it through to the Duels but circumstances meant we couldn’t maximise it as much as we could.

"In the race, we started from the back of the grid, but we stayed calm, made a lot of progress and finished in the points which is all I could have asked for today.

"We move onto Misano now where we will try and continue the good form and get back on the podium."

'High risk'

For Mitch Evans, it was a 100th Formula E race to forget for the Jaguar driver, who was promoted into the duels as a result of Cassidy's lap being deleted.

However, Evans was slapped with a three-place grid penalty for impeding, demoting him to ninth.

He hovered around the foot of the points for the bulk of the race, before attempting an opportunistic move which resulted with Evans losing his front-wing.

He had no choice but to pit for repairs, ending his chances of a top 10. In the end, Evans finished in P15.

"Today was a challenging race," said Evans. "The type of track we had here in Tokyo meant that all of the overtakes had to be high risk, and it’s a shame that it didn’t pay off for me today as I think we could have finished within the points.

"We have all the ingredients to be at the front and the team have been working incredibly hard, so we’ll come back fighting in Misano."