Race Details

Round 4: Mexico City

Mexico City ePrix

The NextEV NIO Formula E Team now travels to Mexico City for round four of the 2016/17 FIA Formula E Championship.

The 17-turn, 2.093km clockwise track incorporates part of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit, used in the Formula 1 and World Endurance Championship. This season, the race will comprise of 45 laps of the fast, bumpy and extremely dirty track.

Pre-Race Preview

Nelson Piquet:

“We are still pushing hard to close the gap to the teams at the very top, but we believe that if everything works out and we have a perfect race then we can crack the top three and try to get our first podium since season one.”

“ It’s always fun to have good crowds, and Formula E has been really well received in Mexico – the fans at last year’s race were incredible. Only in a Formula E car can you hear the crowds when they cheer, so it’s definitely a special race.”

Pre-Race Preview

Oliver Turvey:

“I got to grips with the Mexico City track quickly last year so I will be aiming to continue our strong qualifying form this year and will be pushing to get into superpole to be in a position to race for the top step of the podium.”

“I am looking forward to racing in front of a big crowd again and the great atmosphere at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.”

Pre-Race Preview

Gérry Hughes, Team Principal

“The Mexico City Formula E circuit is an unusual blend of F1 track and street circuit characteristics.”

“The combination of the stadium section and the kerbs should play to the strengths of the team’s chassis. We have shown this season that we have a quick car and now we need to realise our full potential in the races and get Nelson and Oliver onto the podium. Moving up to fourth in the team’s championship after Buenos Aires was a great reward for everyone in the team, but we need to keep pushing hard to keep advancing.”

Gallery

Post-Race 1 Review

Nelson Piquet Jr (Car #3) – finished 9:

“It’s been a disappointing day. Essentially I made a mistake in qualifying and the team made a mistake in the race so it wasn’t a good day.”

“I was a little bit unlucky in qualifying as 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. In the race we lost time in the pitstop and then our strategy was less than ideal; sometimes you need to roll the dice and take a few risks. We will look at what went wrong and work to improve by the next race.”

Post-Race 1 Review

Oliver Turvey (Car #88) – DNF:

“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. This morning we showed the pace of the car and pole position was a great result for the whole team. ”

“The start of the race went well and I was leading for the first stages. I could see that Jose Mario Lopez and I were pulling a gap and then, on lap 13, when I was exiting the last chicane the car cut off and went into neutral. We need to understand why that happened. I try to reset the car but it wouldn’t work so that was the end of the race. It’s such a shame to go out of the race in the lead but at least we showed we had the pace today.”

Post-Race Review

Gerry Hughes, Acting Team Principal, NextEV Formula E Team

“We are all bitterly disappointed with the result today. Oliver had an electrical issue with his car, which we were unable to recover from. ”

“This is something we need to look into as we need to be converting these strong qualifying positions into strong race results. For Nelson it came down to a strategy decision and comparing to the result achieved by Di Grassi, we should have pitted earlier. To add insult to injury, we also lost 13 seconds in the pitstop so we need to understand what happened there. 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. On a positive note we were able to collect five championship points today”