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Could a few drops of light rain in the British summer have been more damaging than what happened in London’s Docklands on Saturday afternoon?

The only rain the venue saw all week came before the start of qualifying, which Cassidy led in the points.

The Jaguar driver was in high spirits after two strong morning practice sessions when he was the fastest ever to achieve a 300kW lap.

He knew he had a good car underneath him and at least a front row chance. But that all came crashing down when his Hankook tires overheated from being pushed twice. Then his day began to spiral downward.

“Basically, the track was getting better and better, we were being very aggressive on the rear tyre and when the track was great at the end of the session, it was completely out of control,” said Cassidy after a qualifying disaster that left him 17th on the grid.

“I couldn’t believe, somehow, how it had turned out – that in our session we had gotten a little bit of rain that changed [everything].

We were the fastest in merit, in speed. [in FP2]“I didn’t really need a crazy session.”

Dennis the troublemaker angers Cassidy.

Cassidy started the race in 17th place, and was in a very difficult position. Jake Dennis, a driver who had been subjected to some tactical friction from Porsche team-mate Wehrlein last year, was determined to direct some of the friction himself.

Dennis’ aggressive wheel-slamming maneuver sparked the first bit of Cassidy’s anger that caused his radio waves to churn.

“What happened, Dennis?” he said angrily. “He pushed me right into him. He hit me straight in the head. The steering wheel went completely off.”

Dennis was given a 10-second penalty for this, plus a five-second penalty for a first-lap incident with Robin Frijns, which saw the Envision Racing driver taken to hospital for tests on his wrist. He was also given a five-second penalty for a collision with Jean-Eric Vergne (which Vergne told The Race was a “racing accident”), bringing Dennis’ total to 20 seconds, which was uncomfortable for Cassidy.

Cassidy asked on the radio how much Porsche was paying him, and urged the stewards to punish him by “sending him to jail.”[ing] “Send him through the damn holes,” he said as his battle with Dennis continued.

Speaking to The Race after the call, Cassidy said of Dennis: “I respect him a lot, he’s a great driver.

“We competed clearly at the World Championships last year, and he came out on top, and I wouldn’t take that away from him at all. But today it was clear he had a job to do I think.”

But it wasn’t just the discomfort of the contact that angered Cassidy. It seemed to have a practical legacy as well, influencing him to take the more important attacking move—one that took him four tries to pull off successfully the first time.

“He hit me wheel to wheel, I think it was on TV, but there was another incident where he swerved hard to the right towards me as we were going down the hill into T6, and I don’t know if that moved the underfloor of my car, into the transponder,” he said.

“It wasn’t right, I made the wrong attack position three times during the race, and every time I made a mistake it was like losing two positions.

“Getting one place in London is difficult, so coming back from six places was definitely not easy, and there was almost no strategy at the time, so it felt like I was coming back to last place every time.”

In Dennis’s view, the contact was “like the touch of a feather, very rough” and “completely ridiculous.”

But that incident wasn’t the end of the Andretti driver’s turmoil, in Cassidy’s mind.

Cassidy needed every point he could muster in addition to the six he had saved, and was determined to do his best to get the precious fastest lap. But in front of him was the reigning champion’s familiar red, white and blue Andretti Porsche, which slowed the pack and killed any chance of Cassidy getting the bonus point.

“Up until the moment the checkered flag was raised, there was a determination to make my life difficult,” Cassidy said.

“I don’t want today’s race to affect my judgement or respect for him, I think he’s world class, but certainly the race conditions were very difficult for me.”

But Dennis insisted the alleged spoiler tactic had “nothing to do with that” and was more designed “to keep Sasha [Fenestraz] So he got no points.

“We fight with him” [Nissan] In the constructors’ class (3rd). I had no idea Nick was in the race. I had no idea where he was.

It’s no surprise that after such a painful series of incidents, Cassidy felt “relieved” to be able to come away with six points.

Evans and Buemi give each other away

With Cassidy out of the picture in terms of scoring big points, why wasn’t the other Jaguar driver able to take full advantage?

Partly because Jaguar were far from getting everything right on Saturday when it came to Evans’ race management, ironically a big part of that was the Jaguar I-Type 6 run by Envision customer Sebastien Buemi.

Evans and Bommi started from the front row and ran first and second in the early stages as each tried to stay in the lead but perhaps for too long.

“I think that was the wrong approach,” Evans told The Race.

“We needed to get into the tow and that would have changed things a lot. Pascal was building up a lot of energy behind us and Seb had the same idea, he wanted to be in front.”

It was difficult for Buemi to expend the right amount of energy to raise his goal, and in the end, both Buemi and Evans hurt each other from an energy perspective by staying in the lead for too long.

When Wehrlein deliberately delayed his attack strategy and the critical time came for these attacks, the power advantage of the Porsche 99X Electric was enough that Evans could not defend it.

Once Wehrlein passed the Jaguar, he was able to execute his attack patterns and use the extra power with a higher target. Evans already knew at this point that it was over.

“I put a lot of effort into trying to get track position after his attack, when he went into the second activation, just to try to get track position and hope for the safety car but I couldn’t quite get it and then my target dropped a lot and I was a sitting duck,” Evans explained.

It’s no surprise that Evans was “surprised and clearly disappointed” by the outcome of a race he probably should have won.

Why didn’t the Jaguar customer help?

With a massive 234-point gap between the leading Jaguar team and seventh-placed customer team Envision heading into Saturday, there was a clear gap in what was at stake for each.

Jaguar, which is 33 points ahead of Porsche, was in a very favourable position in the teams’ standings, and in fact, it still is after the incident caused by Oliver Rowland with Antonio Felix da Costa at the last corner.

So it seemed logical that Buemi would be deployed to put together a worrying plan to help Evans in the race.

Although Buemi’s engineer Connor Summerville passed some friendly messages to Evans early on (“Our race covers Wehrlein”), it didn’t go well from Evans’ and Jaguar’s point of view.

When asked by The Race if he expected the extended Jaguar family to help with Envision, Evans replied: “Do we? [a family with Envision]?

“It doesn’t seem like it. I don’t know if there were discussions, but the feeling I get is that they made it very clear that they wouldn’t be helping.

“I wasn’t expecting any help. I think it was made clear that there wouldn’t be any support. [from Envision]”Like Andretti and Porsche.”

Buemi himself largely supported these views, saying that the interest in Evans and Jaguar was not the biggest concern.

“I don’t want to do anything silly, but my goal was to win the race,” he said.

“I wanted to do well, I wanted to score big points. And to some extent, I didn’t really care what was going on with them. [Jaguar]”I was running my race as hard as I could.”

The relationship between Jaguar and Envision was as strong and solid as ever last season. Jaguar hailed the Envision teams’ title-winning success last year, but it is clear, as with Andretti and Porsche, that some balancing has occurred since then.

Will this ice melt and recover a bit from Saturday to Sunday as the title race escalates from important to decisive?

“Maybe not, but this is a conversation for [team bosses] Sylvan [Filippi] And James [Barclay] “To have,” Evans assumed.

“But I certainly don’t expect that. It would be great if it happened, but let’s see.”

Fairline’s Risk/Reward Shine

Evans was right to take risks in qualifying, but it was Wehrlein and Porsche who judged things perfectly in the race.

The only hint of chaos in Wehrlein’s race was the grinding sound of carbon fiber he could hear behind him.

He didn’t let his early drop behind Norman Nato derail him, and then he and the team played the power game to perfection as Buemi and Evans became obsessed with each other.

Wehrlein got off to a strong start from halfway through, and the overtaking he did well and the pressure he put on Evans later on was on the right side of the risk-reward balance you need to win the title.

Wehrlein has been absent at times this year, most notably when team-mate Da Costa took four wins in five races while Wehrlein managed just one podium in the same period, but he was faultless on Saturday night.

That puts him in prime position on Sunday with a simple goal: to finish the season against the Jaguars and win a very emotional title.

“I feel at home here. I grew up an hour away from the Porsche factory,” Wehrlein told The Race.

“I spend a lot of time with these guys, and I enjoy being around them. You can hear it, and I definitely feel it.

“I also really want to win for the team because I think they deserve it and I’m probably happier for them than I would be for myself.”