The Formula E season finale took place at the ExCeL London’s unique indoor/outdoor layout on Sunday, which was affected by standing water due to heavy rain.
Prior to the two stoppages, race director Scot Elkin had instructed drivers to follow the safety car to assess conditions before deploying the red flag.
With only six laps completed behind the safety car and nearly an hour and 20 minutes after the race officially started, drivers went back out for a third time with green flag running commencing from the eighth lap via a rolling start.
“They [the conditions] were very bad. Scot said that we were about to go racing before the first red flag and I was basically shouting down the radio saying it’s way too dangerous," said NIO 333’s Dan Ticktum who finished eighth.
“It was honestly pretty dangerous for the whole race even when it did start but everyone here is very experienced and mature.
“On the straights, basically, we couldn’t see, no one was doing anything stupid so [we were] able to have a pretty clean race which was good in the end.”
Despite the tricky conditions, there were surprisingly no incidents for the 38-lap race, with no yellow flags displayed at any point once green flag running started, as all 22 drivers finished the race.
Robin Frijns, who finished his last race for Abt Cupra in 17th, believes the race was lucky to run without incident given the low-grip conditions and lack of visibility.
“It was just about the limit [to run the race], but in the end no one really did a big mistake,” he said.
“We can stand here now saying that it was alright because we didn’t have a safety car, we didn’t have a red flag, there were no big crashes.
“But if someone spun out of Turn 14 and were stuck there at a 45-degree angle, there are 10 cars coming in and it would be a big shunt. Life is easy if you know what happens.”
