Di Grassi Wins Shanghai E-Prix Round 13 as Wehrlein Snatches Championship Lead From Evans

Lucas di Grassi won the 2026 Shanghai E-Prix Round 13 from nineteenth on the grid, passing Joel Eriksson at the hairpin and Jean-Éric Vergne around the outside of Turn 1 on the final lap to give Lola Yamaha ABT its first Formula E victory. Heavy rain forced the race forward and brought a Safety Car start for the second day running, but the track that dried unevenly rewarded the cars set up for what was coming, not what was already there. Vergne completed the podium picture from eighteenth for Citroën Racing, Eriksson took his first Formula E podium for Envision Racing, and Mitch Evans never started after a suspected DC/DC failure. Pascal Wehrlein’s fourth place was enough to take the Drivers’ Championship lead, nine points clear with four rounds to go.

Key Points: Shanghai E-Prix Round 13

• Di Grassi wins from P19, Lola Yamaha ABT’s first Formula E victory, passing Eriksson at the hairpin and Vergne around the outside of Turn 1 on the final lap
• Wehrlein’s P4 finish and Evans’ failure to start hand the German the Drivers’ Championship lead for the first time this season, now nine points clear with four rounds remaining
• Vergne completes a comeback drive to P2 for Citroën after starting eighteenth on a strategy deliberately set up for a dry race, while teammate Cassidy ran the wet setup and finished fifteenth
• Eriksson takes his first Formula E podium in P3 for Envision Racing
• Evans does not start after a suspected DC/DC failure on a championship-specification component. Da Costa drops from as high as P3 to finish P14, Jaguar TCS Racing’s first non-scoring round in eleven, Teams’ lead cut to six points over Porsche
• Maloney’s suspension failure brings out a late Full Course Yellow that reshapes the finish, Rowland uses it to switch to dry-ready tyres and gains six positions on the final lap alone to take P8 and the point for fastest lap

Race Recap: Wet Start, Drying Track

The adverse weather forecast pushed the second Shanghai race forward by three hours, the same call made for Saturday’s race. Heavy rain meant the field started behind the Safety Car for three laps before racing got underway on a fully wet circuit. Drugovich took pole for Andretti, with Rowland fourth on the grid for Nissan after strong pace in the wet through the Duels. Nato made it through qualifying too before being disqualified from the session for a minor technical infringement, dropping him to the back of the grid.

With the surface expected to dry unevenly through the race, several teams split their strategies rather than commit both cars to one plan. Citroën Racing sent Cassidy out on a setup built for wet conditions from fifteenth and gave Vergne, starting eighteenth, a car built for a race expected to stay largely dry. Di Grassi and Lola Yamaha ABT made the same bet from further back, the Brazilian lining up nineteenth on a dry-oriented setup while teammate Maloney, who had qualified ninth and started eighth, ran a more conventional wet approach. Jaguar’s da Costa started thirteenth. Evans had qualified twelfth.

The Strategy Gamble Pays Off

The cars set up for the wet had their moment first. Da Costa moved up the order in the early, changeable phase and was running as high as third at the midway point. Rowland held position inside the top ten while the circuit stayed damp. Both were on tyres and pressures built for conditions that were not going to last.

The track dried faster than the wet-setup cars could cope with. Da Costa began losing ground as Jaguar found themselves compromised on remaining energy for the conditions the race had turned into. Rowland fell back through the same window, his tyres built for grip that the surface no longer needed. That opened the door for Vergne and di Grassi. Vergne’s dry-oriented Citroën started building an energy advantage over his rivals as the laps ticked past, and di Grassi, having saved energy toward the back of the field through the wet opening phase, began showing genuine pace once the surface turned in his favour.

Maloney’s Suspension Failure and the Late Safety Car

Maloney had kept his race tidy from eighth on the grid, making up places early and managing his energy carefully while the track was still finding its footing. With only a handful of laps left, a suspension failure brought his Lola to a stop on the start-finish straight. The Full Course Yellow landed just as the dry-setup cars had started to take over, and it gave the late runners one more chance to reset.

Rowland used the neutralisation to switch to tyres and pressures set for the now-dry surface. He had been sliding backward for laps on rubber that no longer matched the conditions. Coming out of the Full Course Yellow with a final Attack Mode still in hand, he found pace nobody behind him could answer, gaining six positions on the last lap alone to cross the line eighth and take the extra point for fastest lap. Nato, working his way up during his own final six-minute Attack Mode window, had the charge cut short when the yellow flags came out midway through it and finished seventeenth.

Di Grassi’s Final-Lap Move

The race was ultimately decided by the timing of di Grassi’s second Attack Mode after the Full Course Yellow restart. Having already carved his way from fifteenth to third, the extra power boost launched him past Eriksson at the hairpin on the penultimate lap. On the final tour, he pulled off a brilliant move around the outside of Vergne into Turn 1, seizing a lead he would refuse to relinquish. It is Lola Yamaha ABT’s first win under the Lola brand, di Grassi’s fifteenth career Formula E victory and his first since 2022.

From the Podium

Vergne’s second place was built on the split strategy Citroën committed to before the lights went out. He struggled to find pace in the opening laps on a car set up for a race that had not turned dry yet, and admitted to some frustration early on. Once the track came around to his setup, the gamble paid off, and he crossed the line just 0.565 seconds behind di Grassi, having taken his own Attack Mode later than the winner and been left with less time to defend.

Eriksson’s third was his first Formula E podium and came from a genuine fight rather than a lucky bounce. Ahead of the Full Course Yellow he had the race under control, and by his own account had the pace to hold the position to the flag in a fully green race. The neutralisation cost him the tyre grip he had built up, and he could not repel di Grassi’s late move at the hairpin.

Provisional Classification: Shanghai E-Prix Round 13

Scheduled for 27 laps, the race ran to 28 after the early Safety Car period, a total distance of 85.2 kilometres.

Jaguar TCS Racing: Evans Sidelined, Da Costa’s Race Unravels

Evans qualified twelfth but never made the grid. A suspected DC/DC failure, a championship-specification component fitted across the whole field rather than a manufacturer part, caused a fuse in the battery to blow. Jaguar TCS Racing pointed to a similar failure on da Costa’s car in free practice at the Mexico City E-Prix earlier in the season as the closest reference point.

Da Costa’s race offered a different flavour of disappointment. He made real progress in the early, wet stages, running as high as third at the midway point. As the track dried faster than expected, the team found themselves short on remaining energy for the conditions and lost position through the closing laps, crossing the line fourteenth. It is Jaguar TCS Racing’s first non-scoring round in eleven, and their Teams’ Championship lead, which stood at nineteen points after Sanya, is down to six over Porsche heading into the final four rounds.

Evans remains second in the Drivers’ Championship, nine points behind Wehrlein. Da Costa sits fourth, thirty points off the lead.

Nissan: Rowland’s Late Charge, Nato Undone by Timing

Rowland’s eighth place looked unlikely for most of the afternoon. Strong wet-weather pace had put him fourth on the grid, and he held a top-ten position while the track stayed damp. As it dried, his tyres, set for conditions that had already moved on, cost him position after position. The late Full Course Yellow gave the team the window to react. Fresh pressures for the dry, a final Attack Mode deployed at the right moment, and six positions found on the last lap alone carried him to eighth and the point for fastest lap. It was his tenth Formula E fastest lap, the sort of salvage job a reigning champion is expected to find.

Nato’s afternoon had less luck attached to it. Disqualified from qualifying for a minor technical infringement, he started from the back and was working through his own final six-minute Attack Mode when the Full Course Yellow arrived and cut the charge short. He finished seventeenth, the strategy that briefly threatened to deliver more undone by timing rather than pace.

Midfield Scrap and Track Limit Casualties

Wehrlein’s fourth for Porsche was the result that mattered most in the wider championship picture, and Müller followed him home in seventh for a double points finish that took eighteen points off the table for the Manufacturers’ fight. Drugovich converted pole into sixth for Andretti, the extra three points from top qualifying keeping his tally respectable from a race that never fully came together on strategy. Dennis finished thirteenth for the same team, outside the points on a day the double-header did not go Andretti’s way at the sharp end.

Barnard took ninth for DS Penske, Günther eleventh. Ticktum scored the final point in tenth for Cupra Kiro, with teammate Martí twelfth, some lap times on car 33 deleted for track limits along the way. Cassidy’s wet setup on the other side of the Citroën garage never came good, and he crossed the line fifteenth. Mortara took sixteenth and de Vries eighteenth for Mahindra Racing, a quiet weekend for the team on home soil in China.

Standings Snapshot – After Round 13

The championship heads to Tokyo for Rounds 14 and 15 on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26 July.

Coffee Corner Take

Di Grassi is forty-one years old and just won a Formula E race from nineteenth on the grid by passing two cars in the final two laps. That is the sort of finish Formula E usually gives to a rookie with nothing to lose, not a 41-year-old who has been here since Beijing 2014. He has just delivered a brand its first win in conditions that caught out half the field.

Starting a car nineteenth on a setup built for a race that had not turned dry yet is a bet, not a plan. It only reads as brilliant because it worked. Had the rain lingered another ten laps, this is a very different write-up. Citroën ran the safer version of the same idea, sending Cassidy out wet and Vergne dry rather than committing the whole garage one way. Vergne’s second place is the payoff. Cassidy’s fifteenth is the other side of the same call.

But the number that moves this championship is Wehrlein’s. Fourth place, on a day he was never fighting for the win, is now worth more than it looks because Evans did not start. Nineteen points became nine in the space of one afternoon, and the shift has nothing to do with anything Wehrlein did wrong or right beyond simply being on the grid. That is the brutal part of this championship right now. Reliability is scoring points as effectively as pace.

Jaguar’s blank round will sting longer than most. A DC/DC failure on a common component is not a Jaguar problem specifically, and Ian James was straight about that. But eleven rounds of scoring ended on the day it mattered least to lose, at a track where da Costa had genuine pace, and the Teams’ cushion that looked comfortable at nineteen points three races ago is down to six with four rounds left. Porsche have not had to do anything dramatic to close that gap. They have just kept finishing.

Four rounds to go, nine points separating the top two drivers, six separating the top two teams. Tokyo is next, and after the double-header this championship has just produced, nobody arrives there believing they know how it settles.