The Mahindra Formula E team is expecting a challenging race ahead of this week’s DHL Valencia E-Prix at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain. This will be ABB FIA Formula E’s first visit to a permanent track, slightly modified to adapt it to allow Formula E cars on the track.
Team boss Dilbagh Gill said he was “confident in the package” they had this season, but the team needed to make improvements in the one-lap qualifying pace.
The team finished on the podium in the second Rome E-Prix on 11 April 2021, with Alexander Sims scoring eighteen points. They are currently seventh in the team’s standings, three points behind ROKIT Venturi Racing.
Sims offered a technical analysis of the track for this weekend, stating: “It’s a lot smoother with longer straights and should be pretty challenging on energy. There’s lots of regen zones and coasting and not too much mechanical braking, although I think we’ll see slipstreaming coming into play here”.
The track is 3.376 kilometers long and comprises of fifteen turns, with a long-winding sequence of corners in the first sector, a 90-degree Turn six corner, a long straight, a sharp chicane at Turn nine and ten, and a very tight chicane in the last three corners of the track before the pitlane.
Alex Lynn, Sims’ teammate, was optimistic this track could suit the M7 Electro car: he thought that if the team could put it all together, there was a good chance at points with their focus on car efficiency, which he believes to be crucial on this track.
Round five of the Formula E championship will take place on 24 April 2021 at 15:00 CET (14:00 BST) and Round six will take place at 14:00 CET (13:00 BST).
