Envision’s Nick Cassidy won the first New York E-Prix of the weekend, as rain chaos towards the end of the race cut short the 45 minute + 1 lap race.
Lucas di Grassi finished second, with Robin Frijns third in a double podium for the Envision team.
Cassidy led from pole and, although he did lose the lead to Di Grassi at times, he always regained it through the Attack Mode shuffling. Frijns meanwhile made his way through the pack from seventh, overtaking Stoffel Vandoorne in the last few minutes, at the same time as Di Grassi, as the Belgian dropped from second to fourth in one corner.
Although Vandoorne finished fourth, he should count himself lucky. In the last 12 minutes on the clock, rain started coming down, light at first then harder. With the cars having all-weather tyres, it was sketchy conditions and the drivers needed to use all their skill to keep the cars on the road.
However, in the space of about 30 seconds, the rain came down a lot harder, and when the leaders reached turn 6, they found a literal flood. The leaders aquaplaned off track into the barriers and into each other, with Mortara also nearly ending up with them. Frijns just survived, leading the race with Mortara second and Mitch Evans, who had been 11th, now in third — but almost inevitably the race was red flagged.
After a period of clearing the cars from the barriers, the race director Scott Elkins announced the race would not be resumed, leaving Cassidy as the winner.
In fifth was Edoardo Mortara, who went from ninth to fifth seemingly in a matter of corners towards the end of the race. As he finished only one place behind title rival Vandoorne, he retained lead of the championship, by 12 points.
Sebastien Buemi finished sixth for Nissan, his best result of the season so far. Pascal Wehrlein finished seventh for Porsche, with Jake Dennis eighth, Sam Bird ninth, and Nyck de Vries tenth.
The other two title challengers, Mitch Evans and Jean-Eric Vergne, failed to score. Evans finished just outside the points in 11th, while Vergne spun on the first lap and finished 18th.
