Both title contenders accused Envision Racing of manufacturing the crash that wrecked their Tokyo races.

Formula E’s championship fight turned poisonous in Tokyo, with Jaguar’s Antonio Felix da Costa and Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein both levelling accusations of foul play at Envision Racing after a chaotic sequence at Turns 6 and 7 dumped one of them in the barriers and the other out of contention.

The flashpoint came when Sebastien Buemi, already carrying a five-second penalty for first-lap contact with Josep Maria Martí at Turn 7, abruptly slowed as the regular pit window opened. Edoardo Mortara, da Costa and Wehrlein, running third, fourth and fifth, closed up in an instant. Da Costa was pitched into the TecPro barrier, Wehrlein’s Porsche lost a wing and its suspension, and the German picked up a 10-second penalty of his own.

Envision had already rewritten its strategy on the fly, sending Buemi out on a six-minute attack mode as early as lap 14. The Swiss vaulted from 13th to second by lap 18, which made his sudden loss of pace all the more jarring for those behind.

Da Costa, who had been eyeing a scrap with Dan Ticktum for the win, was scathing.

“I’m very disappointed because I think we did the perfect race, we had more than two percent on the leaders,” he said. “We had the perfect strategy to win it. Maybe we would have had a bit of a fight with Ticktum, but I thought this one could be ours. For some reason that I can’t understand, when the pit window opened, Buemi pulled the handbrake and lost four seconds in three corners. It’s very unsporting.”

The Portuguese reserved his sharpest words for Wehrlein. “He crashed me out on purpose. He had damage from the corner before and I think he decided that if he is out, I am out, too.”

Da Costa’s wider grievance was with the Envision pit wall rather than the driver, and with the fact that the team runs Jaguar powertrains. “My problem is not with Buemi, it is with his team and his strategy team,” he said. “The one car that doesn’t have the same colour as mine that I am hoping to get a slightly easier time from, they put my race in the bin today.”

Buemi: “it’s not forbidden”

Buemi, nursing a badly bruised hand after the de Vries clash, said the plan was to help team-mate Joel Eriksson through the field.

“It [the strategy] was on the go, and I think the team realised that obviously me slowing everyone down would obviously help massively, which it did, it did ultimately,” he told The Race. Asked whether that was fair, he replied that “whether that’s totally fair or not, it’s another discussion”, adding: “I got instructed to do that and I just did what the team told me to do. But yeah, you may think it’s correct or not, obviously it’s not forbidden to do that.”

Wehrlein went further, hinting at collusion between Jaguar and its customer squad. “I don’t know what the plan was with Buemi, why he was trying to hold up this whole group,” he said, noting that drivers normally raise their pace before stopping. “He did exactly the opposite, so there was for sure a strategy behind it. Depends on from whom he was giving that call.”

“There’s always a bit of a game that towards the end of the season, you’re supporting the best guy in the standings,” he added. “But to actively change the race, we’ve never done that.”

On the clash itself, Wehrlein insisted he was entitled to room. “I was on the inside, there’s a rule in that sequence of corners where you need to be given space on the inside if you are side by side the corner before. I wasn’t being given that. I got pushed into the inside wall and that destroyed my race.”

The cost was immediate. Wehrlein’s nine-point cushion evaporated as Mitch Evans carved from 16th to fourth to lead him by three points. Porsche’s misery was compounded by Nico Mueller, who took damage in first-lap contact with da Costa, days after his crew rebuilt the car around a fresh survival cell following his qualifying semi-final shunt with polesitter Jake Dennis.

It is understood that Envision and Porsche discussed the affair rather more cordially once the dust had settled.

Further detail on the weekend is available via the official Formula E Tokyo E-Prix page and the championship standings.