
THOUGHTS OF A TEAM PRINCIPAL
As we reach the end of this break in the season, I look forward to our return to the city of Rome next week for Rounds 4 and 5 of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.
For Mahindra Racing, Rome is a city which we really like, and it is a location where we have shown a good amount of pace in the past. Last year Alexander came an impressive second place in Sunday’s race, following a fantastic and intelligent drive. It is a difficult track, it has got both high-speed and some technical sections, but I believe these to be quite suitable to our car. Both Oliver and Alexander are feeling enthusiastic about the race weekend, with Oliver looking to build upon strong Practice and Qualifying pace from Diriyah and Alexander hoping to show the true potential of his #29 car after some difficult races so far.
We have some wonderful memories of the Rome E-Prix, because Mahindra actually launched a new company, pure electric car company Automobili Pininfarina, there four years ago. As part of the launch we did not race in our traditional red livery, but instead a blue one – leading Felix Rosenqvist to accidentally drive into Audi’s pit box looking for that signature red colour! A year later in 2019 we continued the celebrations of Automobili Pininfarina, bringing with us to the E-Prix a prototype of the Battista car, a staggering achievement when the brand had not even existed a year prior to the event.
As with last year, we will see two races around the Circuito Cittadino dell’EUR. Such double-headers bring with them both positives and negatives for a race team, because whilst the turnaround is very quick and intense, the second race day enables us to build upon the findings of the day before.
Overall, I think we are going there quite optimistic. There have been a lot of learnings from the first three races of this year and in this long gap between Mexico and Rome we’ve been able to do a lot of work, and our simulation and correlation work has improved considerably.
See you out there!
Dilbagh.