Facts & Figures: The best statistics from the 2024 Formula E season opener in Mexico

Formula E held its first race of the 2024 season in Mexico on Saturday. The Hankook Mexico City E-Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez produced some interesting statistics, milestones and curiosities.

Statistical peculiarities at the Mexico City E-Prix

• The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was hosting an E-Prix for the eighth time. Only the Berlin-Tempelhof airport has hosted Formula E in as many years, but the German capital has organised a total of 17 races. Pascal Wehrlein's success was the third consecutive race win on the track for a Porsche powertrain. For the third time, there was a German winner, and for the fourth time, a German was on pole position - both more often than in any other city.

• Since Oliver Turvey's sensational pole position in 2017, only Mahindra and Porsche have taken first place on the grid in Mexico City, both three times each. Wehrlein achieved his third pole position at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. It was the fourth pole of his Formula E career. He achieved all four in Mexico - in addition to those in Mexico City, he also claimed one in Puebla in 2021.

• With his fifth E-Prix victory, Wehrlein became the most successful German Formula E driver to date in terms of victories. He also achieved this in terms of total points (399), as he overtook Daniel Abt, who scored 390 points in his career. Over the course of the season, Wehrlein has scored points in all of his last twelve E-Prix.

• While Wehrlein finished on the podium at the Mexico City E-Prix for the third time in a row, the record is held by someone else: Sebastien Buemi has been presented with a trophy in the Mexican capital four times. However, he is still waiting for his first victory there.

• Thanks to his eight points from Mexico City, Jean-Eric Vergne is the second driver after Lucas di Grassi to have scored more than 1,000 points in his Formula E career. His team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne, on the other hand, is now the driver with the most participations in the duel phase of the qualifying format introduced in 2022: the Belgian has already entered the dues 21 times.

• Debutant Jehan Daruvala is the second Indian Formula E driver after Karun Chandhok. It was the first time an Indian has competed in the electric racing series since the 2015 London E-Prix. There were 3,121 days between these two starts. That's more than 8.5 years.

• Nick Cassidy achieved his 13th podium and his 26th top 10 result in Formula E at the Mexico City E-Prix, making him one of only three active Formula E drivers who have celebrated at least half of their top 10 finishes on the podium. The other two are Lucas di Grassi (40 podiums with 77 top 10 results) and Jake Dennis (17 podiums with 32 top 10 results).

• Before the race weekend, many had assumed that the lap times would be faster than last year. After all, teams and drivers have been able to gain a whole season of experience since the Gen3 debut. However, the fastest lap in 2024 (1:13.103 minutes by Mitch Evans) was actually 5.08 tenths of a second slower than the Formula E track record from 2023 (1:12.595 minutes).

Position changes (Mexico City E-Prix)

With a total of eight positions won, Oliver Rowland was the one who advanced the most in Mexico. Behind the Formula E returnee in this statistic are Nyck de Vries with six and Jake Dennis with five positions won. At the bottom of the list is Robin Frijns with twelve positions lost: Starting from 7th place, the Envision driver retired early in the race after a driving error.

Race laps completed (season)

18 drivers completed all 37 race laps in Mexico. Only Lucas di Grassi, Antonio Felix da Costa and Robin Frijns retired. Sergio Sette Camara did not even start the race.

Lead laps (season)

As in the previous year, the race winner led the field for 30 laps. Apart from Pascal Wehrlein, only Sebastien Buemi was able to collect his first leading kilometres this year.

Performance analysis of the drivers & teams (Mexico City E-Prix)

The winner of our performance analysis of the Mexico City E-Prix is Mitch Evans. The Jaguar driver set the fastest time of the weekend in the semi-final duel (1:13.103 minutes). He was followed by Sebastien Buemi, just 0.138 seconds behind, ahead of Pascal Wehrlein and Nick Cassidy. 16 drivers were within one second of each other in Mexico. Jehan Daruvala (1:14.469) and Nyck de Vries (1:14.585), who was almost 1.5 seconds off the best time, were at the back of the field.

The fastest team on one lap was Jaguar, just ahead of its own customer team Envision. They were followed by Porsche, Maserati and McLaren. The slowest team in Mexico was once again Mahindra. For the manufacturer ranking, this means: Jaguar >>> Porsche >>> DS/Maserati >>> Nissan >>> ERT >>> Mahindra

Gaps to the race leader

This analysis of the gaps clearly shows that Sebastien Buemi lost touch with Pascal Wehrlein after a driving error on lap 24 and that the latter subsequently controlled the race. You can also clearly see how much Mitch Evans' pace dropped off at the same time.

Lap time analysis (Mexico City E-Prix)

In the lap time analysis (we only show the laps after the safety car phase due to the distortion), it is noticeable that the race pace was similarly high over the entire duration of the race - unlike last year at many other circuits.

Dan Ticktum's corner is striking: the ERT driver speculated on another safety car, meaning that his corner is actually outside our graph for long stretches.

It is also noticeable that Sebastien Buemi was clearly faster than Wehrlein after his driving error, but was unable to make up the lost time. Cassidy saved a lot of energy on lap 34 and secured the fastest race lap with a final spurt on lap 36.

The drivers behind Evans slowed down considerably towards the end of the race as the Jaguar driver blocked all attacks. This affected the DS Penske, Andretti and Nissan drivers as well as Jake Hughes and Edo Mortara.