Nyck de Vries' luck worsens after Jeddah Formula E disaster

Nyck de Vries' difficult start to the Formula E campaign worsened in last weekend's Jeddah E-Prix, entirely due to factors outside his control.

With the exception of his opening-corner mistake in São Paulo, everything that has gone against de Vries across the first five races has been due to technical issues.

The Jeddah double-header was no different, with an inverter and battery failure on the start line of the opening race resulting in de Vries being pushed off the grid.

This led Mahindra to fit de Vries with several new components outside of his allocation, resulting in a 60-place grid penalty and a drive-through for the second race, as he was unable to serve the entirety of his grid drop.

The drive-through penalty left de Vries well adrift of the pack, reliant on a safety car to bring him back into contention. Unfortunately, the safety car never appeared, compounding the shocking luck de Vries has faced this season.

De Vries' difficult weekend was slightly brightened in the Mahindra garage by team-mate Edo Mortara, who secured two poles, a second-place finish, and a fourth-place finish.

"Yeah, certainly it was a challenging weekend for our side of the garage for many reasons," de Vries told RacingNews365 during an interview. 

"It was very unfortunate not to be able to start race one on Friday, and unfortunately, as a consequence, we also had to take a hit for the second race, partly because of the issues we had in Mexico when we were retired with a motor failure. 

"Friday was actually the inverter and then the battery, so we accumulated quite a fair amount of damage in a short time. The season is very long, so we felt we needed to introduce new parts to kind of have a clean slate going forward in the season.

"Unfortunately, that meant we were hoping and waiting for a safety car [in race two], which never came. So definitely a tough one. But on the flip side, Edo had a fantastic weekend and scored very important points for the team, and the pace looked great. So yeah, let's focus on the positives.

"Almost thankfully, we have a little bit of a gap now to put all our stuff on the dyno and check what has caused what, so that we are ready for the next part of the season."