Antonio Felix da Costa believes that he could have “challenged for the race win” in Saturday’s Putrajaya ePrix.
The race got going in Malaysia with temperatures soaring above 30°C and da Costa made a spectacular start from his fourth place position, which he earned after claiming one of the Formula E Super Pole’s.
In the early stages of the race, da Costa was caught in a spectacular battle with Renault e.DAMS driver Nico Prost, before the Frenchman was able to pass da Costa towards the pitstop phase – it appeared that the driver of the Team Aguri car lacked straight-line speed compared to his nearest rivals.
“It’s a very positive result for us,” said da Costa. “It was great to fight closely with Renault e.DAMS and the Abt cars. It was a good battle despite the fact that we don’t have the straight-line speed, even though we’re running less downforce.
That makes every move a big risk, because you have to come from a long way back. With a few laps to go, my car had an issue and I had to power cycle the car twice in half a lap.”
The Team Aguri driver was in podium contention at one stage, when he was fighting in second place before an issue caused the car to stop momentarily on track after he had made his first pitstop. Fortunately, the driver from Portugal got going again and was still within a points scoring position.
“All the chances I had to score a podium went away then; second was more than safe and I feel like I could even have challenged for the race win. To get into Super Pole was a really big bonus. We showed that we have the pace to fight for podiums, which is a good feeling going forward.”
Also talking about da Costa’s race was Team Aguri Team Principal, Mark Preston: “…It’s fantastic to take home more points and, if you had offered us sixth place at the start of the weekend, we would have been very happy. That said, it’s frustrating when a technical issue undoes a lot of hard work. Antonio once again showed that he’s a real racer; his race craft was tremendous.”
