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Edoardo Mortara
Practice 1 // P4
Practice 2 // P5
Qualifying // P6
Race // P3
Championship // P8 [47 points]
Norman Nato
Practice 1 // P9
Practice 2 // P12
Qualifying // P19
Race // P14
Championship // P23 [11 points]
ROKiT Venturi Racing
Championship // P8 [58 points]
ROKiT Venturi Racing kick-started the second-half of Season 7 with a bang by powering to the podium in Puebla, Mexico, taking silverware for a second time in the current campaign.
As the second purpose-built circuit on the Season 7 calendar, the 2.93-kilometre venue posed a fresh challenge, and promising pace over the course of practice preceded qualifying for the first-leg of the double-header.
From Group 2, Edoardo Mortara progressed to the Super Pole shootout to take P6 on the grid while a mistake for team-mate Norman Nato left the Frenchman down in P19.
When the eighth round of the season got underway, both Edo and Norman made immediate gains, advancing to P5 and P15 respectively before a safety car halted proceedings at the end of lap 1.
Throughout the race, Attack Mode was the key strategy decider and a large time loss upon activation meant that the timing of its deployment was crucial to success.
With 30-minutes + 1 lap remaining, Edo rolled the dice by activating the power boost device, dropping down to P8 before fighting forward to P4 with his eyes set on the podium
As the race progressed, the Swiss-Italian racer was flirting with a place inside the top three and a second safety car with 17-minutes + 1 lap to go played into Edo’s advantage.
Locked in a strategic fight with both BMW i Andretti Motorsport drivers, Edo moved up to P3 by clearing Jake Dennis before diving past Maximilian Guenther in Turn 1 for P2.
After using energy aggressively over the first part of the race, Edo switched his focus to careful management in the closing stages, coming under pressure from Audi team-mates Lucas di Grassi and Rene Rast.
With one-minute remaining, Edo was overtaken by the Brazilian-German pairing and took the chequered flag in P4.
A technical infraction for provisional winner Pascal Wehrlein meant that the Porsche driver was disqualified, however, and this promoted Edo to P3 – the fourth podium of his Formula E career.
Following on from his mistake in qualifying, Norman took P14 at the flag, 2.6-seconds shy of the top 10.
“It was a solid race from Edo today and the result reflects not only his drive but also the fantastic team effort throughout. It's great to back on the podium and fighting at the front of the pack but it's time to get our heads down and focus on the second race tomorrow putting into play everything we learned from today.”
“It feels fantastic to be back on the podium again! During the six week break before Puebla, we worked very hard to analyse our data from the first half of the season and clearly, the hard work has paid off. I think we drove a very intelligent race today and the timing of our use of Attack Mode worked out perfectly. As an independent team competing against some of the biggest manufacturers in the world, results like this mean a lot and it just goes to show that when everything falls into place, we can be up here. I would like to thank the team for their hard work and hopefully, we can carry this momentum forward into tomorrow.”
“Today’s race was challenging and in the end, I feel a bit frustrated. My mistake in Turn 15 in qualifying was costly and it left me with an uphill battle for the race. I started from P17 and I think we had the pace to finish inside the top 10 so I’m disappointed to finish P14. After the pace that we showed in practice in the morning, we know that we have a good package and we’re fortunate that we get to race again tomorrow. I’ll be giving it my all. Also, huge congratulations to Edo and the team for finishing on the podium! It’s a great reward and reflects the hard work that we put in every race weekend.”
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