Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler Formula E Team leave the season-opening 2019 Ad Diriyah ePrix fourth in the constructors championship after a weekend of two halves.
The first race was plagued incident for the Audi team with a poor starting position from Lucas Di Grassi and an unfortunate crash from Daniel Abt meant the German manufacturer had no points after day one of the season.
However, with Di Grassi at the pointy-end of the grid, Audi was confident of a good result in race two. And after an action-packed race, the Brazilian celebrated the team’s 41st podium in the 60th Formula E race on the streets of Diriyah with a fine second-placed finish. It was also marked Di Grassi’s 31st podium finish in Formula E.
After the weekend, he said: “Thank you to my guys in the pit lane. This trophy is a sweet reward for the hard work done by the whole team after yesterday’s difficult beginning.”
“This is the strength of our team: we never give up. We’re now going to analyze and evaluate everything, continue to improve and be even stronger in the next race. The battle for the championship is just starting for real.”
Daniel Abt meanwhile was classified in sixth position after starting fifteenth on the grid, thus scoring valuable points for both himself and the team in a troublesome weekend on the streets of Diriyah.
This was despite being awarded a drive-through penalty, but with the help of the safety car was able to make his way into the points-paying positions.
Daniel Abt said: “These points today were really hard-fought, but they felt good after a difficult start to the weekend.”
“We may not have scored a lot of points yet, but we know that we’ve got the performance and the car to be in contention for victories. Now we just need to put it all together.”
The team now heads to the second round of the season at Santiago on January 18 fourth in the teams championship. They are just 12 points off Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E Team who enjoyed a stunning debut on the streets of Saudi Arabia as a long campaign lies ahead .
