Oliver Rowland narrowly missed out on completing the double at the Monaco E-Prix, losing out to Sébastien Buemi in the rain.
Despite not managing to make it two race wins in one weekend, Rowland still found himself on the podium when the chequered flag fell. However, it wasn’t a straightforward race for the championship leader.
With the rain coming down at the beginning of the race, the track was slippery, and each move needed delicate precision to avoid a collision.
Rowland’s chance at a win ended when DS Penske’s Jean-Éric Vergne held the field up behind Rowland. This caused him to drop down the order when it came time for him to use his attack mode.
Then, when the Brit went to overtake the Frenchman, he cut the chicane and was forced to give back the place in later laps.
A close call
Oliver Rowland admitted to media in the post race conference that his move on Vergne came from impatience, but he still believed he was in the right.
He said, “Honestly, he was kind of trying to slow the race down and back it up a little bit, so I was getting a little bit impatient because I think he knew that I was the only one that hadn’t done my attack mode, so he wanted to keep the pack quite close together.”
“For me, I was pretty much wheel-to-wheel and I would have been able to make the apex at 11, but at the same time, it’s not easy to get two cars through that, so I kind of understood that they could see it one of two ways.”
The championship leader said he had tried to lift to avoid an incident, but he had to cut the chicane to avoid damage.
“I looked in my mirrors, and it was just full of cars. One on the inside, one here, one there. I tried a little bit, like I lifted, but I just said no, it’s going to get really messy if I end up giving it back. For me, it’s kind of a racing incident, but I also get both sides.”
Extended lead
The Monaco E-Prix was a near perfect weekend for Rowland, and much like the rest of this season, the Brit extended his lead.
He told media that, coming from Miami, he was happy with the results in the principality. “Yeah, absolutely. I mean, coming here, I had a pretty tough weekend in Miami, so I really focused on the sim and with my engineers to kind of go through that and try to understand what happened.“
Although with the nature of Formula E he confessed expecting to be in the podium every weekend is not realistic. But he is looking to be consistently in the points.
“I don’t expect to always be here, so I think that’s quite unrealistic, but if I can keep doing the best job I can, there’s no reason why I can’t keep scoring consistent points.”
Double-header difficulties
With two races on such a busy weekend, it is hard for drivers to keep the energy up. For Rowland, that was worsened by his win. He missed the opportunity to celebrate and instead was thrown straight into the next race.
He admitted that coming into Sunday, he was in a bad mood. “Weirdly, this morning I woke up in a really bad mood, and I was arguing with everyone in my team before I even went out in free practice.”
“I was still annoyed that I didn’t have an answer from the stewards from yesterday on the incidents that we spoke about. I think I was shouting at everybody before I even went out. And I had a bit of an argument with Norman after free practise as well.”
“So I was in a bad mood for some reason, and I wasn’t particularly quick in FP3, but I kind of refocused myself. But honestly, it’s more like just trying to consolidate a good double header.”
For Tokyo, Rowland will be looking to have another impressive performance over the double-header. Especially as an important weekend for Nissan.
