With a sudden downpour pouring south of the Manhattan skyline, the circuit around the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal quickly became saturated with water – creating treacherous conditions and a puddle on the straight approaching Turn 6.
Cassidy then splashed through the puddle and aquaplaned, spilling his Envision into the barriers at a whopping knots – with Lucas di Grassi and Stoffel Vandoorne following him into the barrier.
But due to the significant level of clean-up required by the track marshals, race control called an end to the race – clearing the grid from the end of lap 29 to declare Cassidy the winner.
The New Zealander thus successfully converted from pole where he placed his car on the grid facing the inside line in an attempt to cover Vandoorne. But that proved unnecessary as Cassidy started up front as Vandoorne fumbled and lost places to di Grassi and Sebastien Buemi straight away.
Nick Cassidy, Envision Racing, Audi e-tron FE07, Lucas di Grassi, Venturi Racing, Silver Arrow 02, Sebastian Buemi, Nissan e.Dams, Nissan IM03, the rest of the field
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Although di Grassi was trying to reel in Cassidy, he struggled to break through the half-second buffer Kivito kept in reserve. Cassidy also saw off all the attacks from di Grassi through the attack mode stage, keeping the Venturi driver at bay and also fending off a spin on lap 24 on fanboost.
Ironically, di Grassi’s failure to make the most of the fan boost allowed Vandoorne to pass the Brazilian with his own five-second burst of power. But di Grassi rallied and brought Vandoorne back at the start of the 28th lap, then the fast-catch Freins pounced on him and stole the inside line to claim third as the rain began to fall.
Cassidy had more than a second on di Grassi in the rain, and Freins followed the pair and tried to take every figure – which eventually happened at the start of lap 30 when the rain immediately picked up.
The rain then appeared to have killed Cassidy’s chances of victory as the Envision driver aquaplaned and crashed into the wall, followed by di Grassi and Vandoorne.
But Freins shrewdly took his foot off the gas and stopped in time, keeping his head above water and exiting the turn with the race lead.
Edoardo Mortara also aquaplaned and knocked off the fender of his front right wheel, but was able to stop just before reaching the wreckage – doing a 180 degree turn to rejoin behind Frijns.
Meanwhile, Buemi was also a victim of the rain as Pascal Wehrlein pitted on the exit of the corner and was subsequently collected by Sam Bird and Jake Dennis – allowing Mitch Evans to slip past.
The race was thus red-flagged to clean up the mess as the deluge promptly stopped as the remaining cars tiptoed back into the pits. But given the damage to the wall, the race was abandoned – putting Cassidy back on the top step.
Di Grassi’s later switch to Vandoorne and Freins successfully holding on to second place ensured the Brazilian secured the top finish for the 2021-22 season as Freins put two Envisions on the podium.
Vandoorne thus had to settle for fourth place, while Mortara salvaged a strong fifth place to maintain his title lead and reduce the Belgian’s influence in the points.
Like his last two races in Jakarta and Marrakech, Mortara held on to take his second and final attack mode and used it to ignite a charge back up the order after falling to 10th, maneuvering through the bottom half of the points .
Buemi, despite also being caught out in the rain, took sixth ahead of Wehrlein – whose incident with Bird and Dennis will be investigated. Dennis collected eighth ahead of Bird, while Nick de Vries completed the top 10 – but was fourth at the red flag before the results were taken from two laps before.
Evans was 11th after qualifying 14th, but was involved in a pile-up at Turn 6 on the first lap involving Jean-Eric Verne – which left the Frenchman well behind the rest and dealt both drivers a significant blow to their title hopes .
Maximilian Gunther was 12th and also faces an investigation along with Andre Lotterer as they were involved in an incident with Antonio Félix da Costa – which proved fatal for the Portuguese driver.
The Dragon suffered a miserable race with Sergio Sette Camara failing to start as a legacy of his qualifying knock defeats, while Giovinazzi was caught up in a first lap collision between Vergne and Evans and thus had to retire from the pits.
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