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Tempelhof Airport played host to part one of the first double-header of the season. It was an intriguing encounter with the unique layout, track surface and warm temperatures making it a tough race for everyone.
Here’s what the drivers made of the race:
1st Felix Rosenqvist, Mahindra Racing
“The whole day was just incredible. Starting this morning I felt like the car was amazing, I could do consistently very competitive lap times and that’s really what you want in Formula E - to be consistent. That continued throughout the whole day, a big screw up from me in qualifying in superpole that put to me third when I think we had a good chance of being on pole. You can overtake quite easily on this track, it’s a bit like Marrakesh I think so it was a bit of payback from there as we came here a lot more prepared compared to looking back at Marrakesh it’s like looking at the stone age for us. We have done so much and I think we are one of the strongest groups but maybe we are not the biggest team but we have a fantastic team and it’s just been getting better and better every race since then. I’ve been waiting for this and finally it came!”
2nd Lucas di Grassi, Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport
“First of all, I would like to thank everybody, it’s been an incredible day, a very good event with all the public and media. The day for us was very good as the car wasn’t very good in the morning - we started the morning completely lost and then we made a few set-up changes and I ended up putting in a very good lap in qualifying. If you look at Felix’s lap from the morning in terms of pure pace, I don’t think we are at the best track for us, so I tried to hang on for as long as we could but with this track, even with a lot of lift, the problem I had was not a lack of energy, it was the battery temperature going up. The battery temperature is controlled by a system and the more you re-gen, the higher the temperature goes up. In the end I could’ve had the same energy to hold up Felix but the temperature was too high and I started losing re-gen after you pass fifty-five degrees.”
3rd Nick Heidfeld, Mahindra Racing
“To be honest I’m relatively happy but I’m over the moon for the team; a double podium and first win for them - they have done an incredible job over the last two years. Dilbagh [Gill, team principal] is doing an excellent job along with the mechanics. I know you’re probably bored of us drivers speaking about that but it’s really outstanding if you look where we came from and where we are now and I think it’s quite emotional for us and the team, they deserve it. For my race, in the first stint I struggled for a little bit. The second car was a bit easier to drive and I was fighting very hard to try and catch Lucas - I thought I may have a chance but it just wasn’t enough. In the second stint after a few laps my engineer told me that the gap was getting bigger, and my answer was yes to the guys in front but not to the guys behind, so my objective was very clear. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out but still a good result.”
4th Jose Maria Lopez, DS Virgin Racing
“We didn’t have the greatest start in the practice this morning and I kind of knew that we were not spot-on. But I think we had a problem and we need to investigate because I didn’t have the power and the car didn’t move. At the end of the day we need to be realistic, I will not blame the start for me not finishing on the podium, because in the race we didn’t have the pace to fight the Mahindras and di Grassi. We expected a little bit more starting from P2, but there are positive things, the fact we’ve managed to be consistently in the points in the past three or four races and always there in the top 5. If we are there at the end of the day I think we are going to improve a little bit more and be able to have a real fight for the win.”
5th Nico Prost, Renault e.dams
“It was a good race, very good race pace. I got blocked by Jean-Eric Vergne a little bit, which probably cost us, as I think we could have caught Jose Maria Lopez and stayed in front of Seb [Buemi]. Overall, it was a good save from our poor qualifying as a team. I’m happy with the race, we just need to really solve this qually issue, it’s not normal. We have very good race pace on every race and qually is very difficult, so we need to figure this out.”
6th Daniel Abt, Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport
“We had a pretty good start, made up two positions. Then thought we would have been able to attack the DS Virgin Racing cars in front but actually, just before the pit stops, my battery overheated. I just suffered a lot and lost places against Vergne, Prost and Buemi after the stops. It was really tough, I couldn’t really hold them back. They were faster than me and there was not much I could do, so I saved a bit of energy to make a move in the end on Sam Bird. P6 is okay but I was hoping for more today and I’m going to hope for more tomorrow.”
7th Sam Bird, DS Virgin Racing
“It’s not been an ideal afternoon and we lost positions in the pitstop. We worked hard to gain the ground back up but we couldn’t make up any more places before the end. Tomorrow we need to work on qualifying at the front and to dictate the race from there so we’ll see what we can do.”
8th Jean-Eric Vergne, TECHEETAH
“I did the best I could today, P5 on track without the penalty was the best I could have done, we didn’t have a good car today, so a lot of work ahead of us tonight to make for a better race tomorrow.”
9th Maro Engel, Venturi
“It was an entertaining race, I had a really good start and moved up three places, but we have to work tonight because after a good start the gap to the next car was 19 seconds. We had a clean good race, just not good enough on energy management so we need to improve and battery temperature. I think was the main key and tomorrow won’t be easier with 30 degrees coming up and a longer race.”
10th Oliver Turvey, NextEV NIO
“We started P7, eventually got a good start and then in the run up to turn one we got boxed up and a few guys went on the outside and unfortunately just didn’t really have the pace. Seems this track doesn’t really suit our package that well and I think we struggled for pace in the race, was quite happy with the balance and feeling of the car. Just didn’t really have the pace today.”
11th Stephane Sarrazin, TECHEETAH
“It was a difficult race, I was expecting much better. I struggled with the balance of the car, Jean-Eric Vergne also had the same problem. We are ready to improve for tomorrow and try different things. The car was difficult I didn’t manage the energy very well, I was over-consuming.”
12th Nelson Piquet Jr, NextEV NIO
“Race was as expected. We knew it was going to be hard, because our car is not very good on efficiency. We knew it was going to be a situation where we finish between 10th and 15th if nothing else went wrong with anybody else and that’s what happened.”
13th Jerome D’Ambrosio, Faraday Future Dragon Racing
“It was difficult for us. I had a decent qualifying finishing 10th, but we are clearly missing a bit of pace as you could see today in the race. To be honest I don’t know if it’s something big that we miss and we’re completely away from it or it’s many little things. During my career I always believed that there’s never a magic wand so I’m thinking that there needs to be improvements everywhere. I think on the energy strategy, the car balance, I think we were the only one with high downforce, there’s small stuff left and right, in the end can make a big difference, so we’ll see. We’ll have a good debrief tonight and see if we can improve.”
14th Adam Carroll, Panasonic Jaguar Racing
“There were some positives, they came after the negatives. It was a long race, the same for everyone it’s really just the nature of the circuit, the energy targets we have to hit just to get to the end. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t promote great racing. You try to use some energy to pass someone but then it just puts you on the back foot, you never really get it back again, so in general we got to the end again, we had a positive with both cars being really reliable, lots more data and we finished the race. So we can come back tomorrow and try to improve.”
15th, Loic Duval, Faraday Future Dragon Racing
“We are nowhere. We tried so many things this morning because nothing was working properly, we found something which wasn’t too bad but we struggled a lot in qually and were at the back. One of my strong points normally is that in the race wherever I start from, I am competitive. But we are nowhere, I’m almost two seconds off the fastest lap and I feel that I have to save much more energy compared to the guys we were around and the balance of the car was not that nice. Overall nothing went well except that we had a good start and a good pitstop.”
16th, Antonio Felix da Costa, Andretti
“Not good! It was a tough day today, to be honest in qualifying I made a mistake on my lap as well which didn’t help with the scenario today. So I put my hand up for that one, I don’t think it influenced the race that much. We tried an alternative strategy to go a little bit longer on the first car and tried to be quicker in the second car, hoping for a Qualcomm Safety Car, but that never happened so we risked something that didn’t work out. So anyway, as a team we need to try and resolve a few things and work on the car balance to give a bit more confidence to us as drivers and try to extract a bit more from what we have.”
17th, Robin Frijns, Andretti
“It was pretty bad. For me personally, I didn’t do any mistakes, didn’t touch anyone but we knew beforehand it was going to be a difficult weekend for us. The longer the race, the more it hurts us. That’s what you saw. We were together with Antonio fighting for P17, it’s not that one car is quick and one car is slow, both of the cars are just slow. We need to work on tomorrow, and tomorrow is even longer, which doesn’t really look very promising.”
18th, Tom Dillmann, Venturi
“Not the smoothest of days, in the morning I had the problem with the gearbox and I missed half of the first practice and then in the race we had the energy issue from using too much energy and I got a drive-through for that, I don’t know what happened with that so they will have to check. Luckily we race again tomorrow, so we can forget about that.”
Ret, Mitch Evans, Panasonic Jaguar Racing
“Well, the first lap I made a good start, it was good and made a couple of positions off the line into Turn 1, there was a concertina effect on the inside at two and three before the tunnel and someone on the outside was looking pretty good and I don’t think Stephane Sarrazin saw me as he just basically drove me straight into the wall and we interlocked wheels and I just went into the wall, and there was a lot of damage to the car. We had to retire the car and opted to go for Visa Fastest Lap. It was disappointing, because it was looking alright. We got the Visa Fastest Lap which is alright, meaning we got a point. There are some positives we got from today.”
DSQ, Sebastien Buemi, Renault e.dams
“I was not quick enough in the first car and that allowed the leaders to pull away and at the end of the day I had no real margin to fall back. Finishing fifth was more or less the maximum. I thought at some point if I had not of lost time behind JEV I could have maybe attacked Jose as well, but there were too few laps in the end. Looking forward to tomorrow, with two extra laps it should be good. For the race the car will be better. For qualifying? I don’t know.”