FORMULA E: BUENOS AIRES EPRIX RACE REPORT

While wet conditions threatened early in the race weekend, the Buenos Aires ePrix went off under clear, blue Argentinian skies. The entire MS Amlin Andretti team worked to repair damages sustained on the No. 28 car after da Costa made contact in Turn 6 during the morning’s FP1 session. Additional complications in qualifying left da Costa taking the grid from P17 and Robin Frijns starting 13th.   

It was a hard fought 37 laps, and despite hitting energy usage targets and having clean car changes, points from Argentina were not in the cards for da Costa and Frijns. The teammates took the checkered flag from the 11th and 14th positions, respectively.   

From the streets of Buenos Aires, the FIA Formula E Championship travels to Mexico City for Round 4 of competition on April 1. To keep up on all the electric street racing action between rounds, visit msamlin-andrettife.com and follow @MSAmlinAndretti on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Roger Griffiths – Co-Team Principal

“Pretty disappointed in all honesty with the way the weekend has gone. Historically Buenos Aires has been a circuit that has been kind to us in terms of race results – not to be today. Our problems started early on in Free Practice 1 with the crash from Antonio. It’s frustrating because we unloaded with a pretty quick car and we never capitalized on that. We didn’t execute in qualifying the way we needed to do, and any time you end up starting 13th and 17th you make life hard for yourself during the race. We just weren’t able to get into that rhythm during the race.   On the positive side, the car ran reliably in the race; no issues and no repeats of some of the problems we saw early on. Some of the winter development we did has come to fruition, but obviously disappointed we are finishing out of the points. We need to collect our thoughts and work hard over the next few weeks before going to Mexico City.”  

Antonio Felix da Costa – No. 28 MS Amlin Andretti ATEC-002

Start: 17 // Finish: 11 // Standing: 11 (10 points)

“This is a track that historically has been pretty good for me, having won here in the past and then last year running second until we had some problems. I was looking forward to this race, but today I made things a little harder on us with the crash in FP1 – sorry to the MS Amlin Andretti crew for that. We tried to come back from that and then I made another mistake in qualifying and we had some small issues with the battery. Problems just kept adding up, and when everything happens in one day it’s just hard to build confidence. We went into the race with a very positive mindset to go forward, but we struggled today. I think sometimes we need bad days like this to wake up and do big steps forward. That’s what I’m hoping for going to Mexico. I think the team has a lot of good people and together we are going to take big steps forward.”

“The day started pretty OK. In the race, we were able to keep our position with the start and tried to hold it and save as much energy as possible. We just couldn’t follow the guys surrounding us, so it was a difficult race for us. We’re going to review things, but are looking ahead to Mexico City. We need to learn from this and hopefully will get some good information to move forward.”