Stoffel Vandoorne is determined to make amends for last season where he believes he would've been a deserving Formula E world champion.
The Mercedes EQ driver currently tops the standings following victory last time out in Monaco. It was his first win of the season to go along with two podium finishes - one in Saudi Arabia and the other in Italy. The Belgian, whose future beyond this season is unclear, is into his fourth season on the Formula E grid.
His best effort to date is a second place finish two years ago when Antonio Felix da Costa claimed the title. Last season he ended up ninth in the standings, but felt he drove well enough to come out on top. Luck wasn't always on his side with disqualifications and collisions hampering his ambitions.
It was teammate Nyck De Vries who would claim the title, but Vandoorne feels as though he would've been a worthy champion himself. He said: "I feel so yes (I drove good enough to be a world champion last year). Last year was obviously a random season in terms of what happened and the form group of qualifying. Yeah there was definitely occasions where I had my share of bad luck where I lost out on big points.
"One in Valencia where I qualified on pole and got disqualified, then Rome where I had the incident when Lucas (di Grassi) had his problem and both myself and Nyck crashed out. So quite a few occasions where I lost out on big points and if you look the gap at the end, I didn't need that much to jump into the top of the table, but thats the way it went. This year I just want to leave no stone unturned. I want to make sure i do everything right on my side."
Vandoorne has put himself right in the hunt with Mitch Evans and Jean-Éric Vergne hot on his heels as we approach the halfway point of the season. But whilst the former Formula 1 star is thriving, his teammate and the sport's defending champion is not.
De Vries won the season's opener in Saudi Arabia, leading home a Mercedes 1-2, but has struggled to make an impression in the rounds since. It leaves him 42 points behind Vandoorne at the top of the standings, but the Belgian is confident he will turn it around.
He claimed: "From Nyck's side, he's just going through a rough patch, which is easy to go through in Formula E. He's got the speed, he's got everything to fight at the front, he'd just going through a difficult phase but I'm convinced he'll turn things around."
The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship’s most extensive calendar to date continues in Berlin this Saturday 14 May live on Channel 4 from 13:30 BST and on Sunday 15 May from 14:50 BST on Eurosport 2
Catch-up on all the information as the series builds up to the 2022 London E-Prix, which returns this year on 30 & 31 July: https://www.fiaformulae.com/en/championship/race-calendar/2021-2022/london
