RESURGENT MAHINDRA RACING FINISH FOURTH IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP

5 JULY 2018, NEW YORK – The ABB FIA Formula E Championship returned to the Brooklyn Circuit in the Red Hook area for the last two rounds of the championship.

Saturday’s practice sessions started with an extremely dusty track with a very dynamic order of the pacesetters in both sessions. With not much of the dust clearing in the qualifying sessions, an early qualifying group for Felix meant that he had no grip at all thus missing out on setting a good lap and started from sixteenth place. Nick found some grip and was able to start in tenth place.

A clean start saw both cars hold position while there was chaos up and down the order with cars crashing, losing bodywork and pieces flying all over the place. Crawling up the order both of the cars started steadily gaining positions and by the pitstops were in sixth place (Nick) and fifteenth for Felix. A mix up in the pitstop because of the cars coming in double stacked saw Felix lose time while coming into his garage, thus exiting the pit lane several cars down.

A crash on track brought out the safety car and bunched up the pack right up to the last few laps, thus preventing the drivers from using the outright pace of the M4Electro tactically to make up some positions. The car had very obvious race pace, and the boys eventually came home in sixth position for Nick and fourteenth position for Felix.

On Sunday, the weather gods decided to join in the game, causing torrential downpours all night, and providing the pack with a soaked track to practice on. Throwing caution to the wind, the M4Electro looked strong as always, with both the boys ready to do battle in the wet.

A sudden change in the weather brought the sun out and caused the track to start drying up throwing qualifying into a bit of chaos once again. Not the best of qualifying sessions, Nick put his car thirteenth on the grid with Felix starting from ninth place.

Having learned the mantra for staying clear of first lap chaos, once again, while simply staying clear of other cars during the first lap melee, both cars moved up a few positions each.

By the time the pitstop window came around, both cars were up into the top ten, with Felix trying to attack the Jaguar of Mitch Evans. A trademark lightning fast Rosenqvist pitstop saw him leapfrog the Jaguar and move up into fifth position, once again poised to take the fight to those ahead of him; however, the need of the hour was to hold position and save energy to defend from Mitch Evans who was hungering to take his position back. The result: a strong, double points finish for both Nick (eigth place) and Felix (fifth place) to close the fourth season of the ABB FIA Formula E Championship.

RACE RESULTS

HEI Q10 P6 Q13 P8
ROS Q16 P14 Q9 P5

SEASON 5:

RIYADH
ROUND 1
15 DECEMBER 2018

SEASON STATS

MAHINDRA 4th 138pts
ROSENQVIST 6th 96pts
HEIDFELD 11th 42pts

  • 2 WINS
  • 3 PODIUMS
  • 2 VISA FASTEST LAP AWARDS
  • 3 JULIUS BAER POLE POSITIONS
  • 6 SUPER POLE APPEARANCES
  • 138 POINTS

“It was good to finish the season with a double points finish both on Saturday and Sunday for me, and to secure some valuable points for the Teams’ Championship to help the team finish in fourth position.

I am particularly happy to have come back to pace and points for the last couple of races after a difficult midseason. On top of that they were two fun races here in New York with good fights and plenty of overtaking.”

Nick Heidfeld

“It was interesting qualifying in the wet, I think we didn’t really nail the tyre pressures because we looked very good in practice and we weren’t able to keep the same performance for qualifying. P9 wasnt too bad.

I had a really good start and first lap. Great battle with Mitch through a really good race. Great pitstop and good second stint. It was hard to catch the others today, so we brought home what we could, which I’m happy with considering our struggles in the second half of the season. Fourth overall is a good way to finish the season and I’m leaving with a happy face.”

Felix Rosenqvist

“It’s been a season of mixed emotions and quite the roller coaster ride from an unbelievably strong start to the season, leading both Drivers’ and Teams’ Championships at one point, and then going through testing times for the team. We finished fourth overall, we have matured as a team, and have come out stronger and wiser to be able to tackle whatever lies ahead, which we all hope, is victory. For now, we say goodbye to Season 4, and the generation of cars that were the M1, M2, M3 and M4Electro. We will see you soon in Season 5 with a completely new beast to tame.”

Dilbagh Gill

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