Formula E: Edoardo Mortara ends first full season a winner without leading a lap

Edoardo Mortara ended his first season as a full-time Formula E driver as a race winner. He did so without leading a single lap all year.

A total of 13 45-minute races resulted in a total of 469 laps being run throughout the course of the 2018-2019 Formula E season, which ended this past Sunday with DS Techeetah’s Jean-Eric Vergne becoming the sport’s first two-time champion and with DS Techeetah becoming the third different team to win a championship.

Of these 469 laps, Venturi’s Edoardo Mortara led zero in what was his first season as a full-time driver in the sport after spending nine races driving for Venturi throughout the 12-race 2017-2018 season.

Yet he still ended up securing the first victory of his Formula E career.

After the season’s fifth race, the Hong Kong ePrix, Mortara found himself in fifth place in the driver standings and just 16 points behind (61 to 45) points leader Sam Bird of Envision Virgin Racing.

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Mortara had had a solid season up until this point, recording three top four finishes and completing 180 of the 181 laps that had been contested. He was by far the hottest driver in the sport at the time having recorded an average finish of third place in the most recent three races.

Yet without leading a single lap, he became one of the race’s five different winners from five different teams.

Mortara finished the Hong Kong ePrix in a career-high second place in his #48 Spark-Venturi, 1.694 seconds behind Bird.

But after the race, Bird was issued a five-second time penalty for causing a collision with DS Techeetah’s Andre Lotterer, who dominated the race by leading 27 of its 36 laps around the 16-turn, 1.16-mile (1.860-kilometer) Hong Kong Central Harbourfront Circuit temporary street circuit on Central Harbourfront of Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. This penalty demoted him to sixth place and made second place finisher Mortara the race winner.

Now Mortara found himself in a third place tie in the driver standings with his first career win under his belt and just two points behind (54 to 52) Bird, still the points leader. His average finish was now 2.67 in the last three races — but once again, with zero laps led.

What was a great start to the 2018-2019 season for the 32-year-old Swiss-Italian driver quickly turned sour. He finished just two of the season’s remaining eight races, and he did so in 13th and 11th place, respectively. He unsurprisingly failed to lead any laps in these eight races. In fact, he only completed 182 of the 288.

He ended the season with 362 laps completed and zero laps led…

…and his first career victory.

There are three other races in Formula E history that a driver won without leading a lap, but never in Formula E history had a driver who won a race throughout a season finished that season without leading a lap prior to Edoardo Mortara doing so this year.