The famous streets of Monaco were the scene for round five of the 2016/17 FIA Formula E season. The NextEV NIO team collected 12 championship points as Nelson Piquet Jr finished in fourth position, whilst team-mate Oliver Turvey was classified 13th in the Monaco ePrix.
In a hard fought Super Pole shoot-out session, Nelson Piquet Jr set the third fastest time to line up on the second row for the 51-lap Monaco ePrix. Maintaining third in the opening stages of the race, the Brazilian held position until the pitstops. He pitted slightly earlier than planned, on lap 22, due to a safety car and emerged in fourth place.
A fairly processional second stint saw the 31-year-old take the chequered flag in 4th, collecting 12 points – NextEV NIO’s best result of the season so far. “In the race, we got some good points in the bank, which is a real positive, but I don’t think we could have done any better,” explained Piquet Jr. “It was one of my toughest races – I spent the whole time looking in my mirrors. We have the qualifying pace, the car felt good the whole time, we just need to continue to work on our race performance.”
Oliver Turvey experienced a challenging qualifying session, with the grip level changing since the final free practice. The Briton ended up losing the rear of his car in turn two of his qualifying lap, damaging his suspension. With the fourth fastest time in his group, Turvey secured 16th place overall. From his eighth row start in the race, the 30-year-old was able to make up two places on the first lap.
By lap 11, Turvey was up into 12th after both DS Virgin Racing cars were forced into the pits with damage. After pitting on lap 22, the NextEV NIO driver had moved up to 11th place and was in reach of a points finish. Unfortunately, due to the earlier than planned pitstop, Turvey had to work hard to preserve energy to make it to the end of the race in a competitive manner and finished 13th in the end.
“We were trying to pick up as many positions in the race as we could. I felt we could have scored some points but, unfortunately, we were struggling with energy in the final few laps and it was disappointing to finish just outside of the points”, said Turvey.
The championship will now immediately turn its attentions to the Paris ePrix, which takes place this coming Saturday on the streets of the French Capital.
