Despite the unfortunate circumstances, the NextEV NIO Formula E Team leaves Mexico with five championship points: Oliver Turvey collected three points for pole position and Nelson Piquet Jr picked up further two points for finishing ninth in the race.
Loïc Duval (Faraday Future Dragon Racing) crashed on his outlap, causing a red flag in Piquet Jr’s qualifying group. “Essentially I made a mistake in qualifying and the team made a mistake in the race so it wasn’t a good day. We lost the warm-up lap and had to go straight out to our hot lap. I pushed a bit too hard and didn’t get a good lap in”, said the Brazilian.
After avoiding the incidents around him, Piquet Jr had moved up to 15th by lap 17. An issue in the pits caused a delay on exit and saw the 31-year-old rejoining the race as 18th. Piquet Jr secured a points scoring position by lap 38, gaining his ninth and final position after Jérôme D’Ambrosio (Faraday Future Dragon Racing) ran out of energy.
Team-mate Oliver Turvey, who celebrated his 30th birthday on race day in Mexico, was promoted to pole after Daniel Abt (ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport) was handed a penalty, seeing the German sent to the back of the grid. “It was great to get pole position, my first in Formula E, and to get some points on the board before the race even started”, stated Turvey who led the race until lap 13.
A technical issue forced the Briton to stop out on track. “When I was exiting the last chicane the car cut off and went into neutral. I try to reset the car but it wouldn’t work so that was the end of the race. We need to understand why that happened”, explained the 30-year-old.
For the future the NextEV NIO team aims to convert promising qualifying positions into strong race results. Team Principal Gérry Hughes pointed out: “It’s clearly frustrating, as we have demonstrated that we have the pace but we need to be making the best of our opportunities. Now we turn our attentions to the European season where we are determined to improve on our race results.”
