Edoardo Mortara
Practice 1 // P4
Practice 2 // P3
Qualifying // P4
Race // P2
Championship // P2 [18 points]
Norman Nato
Practice 1 // P22
Practice 2 // P14
Qualifying // P12
Race // P14
Championship // P14 [0 points]
ROKiT Venturi Racing
Championship // P2 [18 points]
ROKiT Venturi Racing returned to the track with intent under the Friday night lights of Diriyah, kick-starting Formula E’s highly anticipated seventh season by taking second place and silverware.
In the first of two back-to-back races at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, drivers Edoardo Mortara and Norman Nato showcased encouraging pace throughout practice and capitalised upon this potential in qualifying.
From Group 3, Edo secured a spot inside the Super Pole shootout and ultimately cemented P4 on the grid while Norman qualified in P12 on his debut in the series.
When the 45-minute + 1 lap race got underway, Edo maintained his grid position from the get-go, however, quickly set his eyes and focus on the fight ahead for P3.
After rolling the strategy dice by activating Attack Mode, the Swiss-Italian briefly dropped to P5 but in a daring and spectacular double overtake, successfully navigated his way past Mitch Evans and Pascal Wehrlein to move onto the podium.
A pair of safety cars in close succession momentarily paused the action out on track, however, with the field closed up, this placed Edo directly on the tail of Audi’s Rene Rast and therefore, within touching distance of P2.
By deploying his final use of Attack Mode, Edo overtook Rast on lap 27 and fended off a late threat from the triple DTM champion and Evans behind to take the chequered flag, securing his first podium finish since the 2019 Hong Kong E-Prix.
After briefly losing ground at the start of the race, Norman recovered to a hard-fought P14 finish, falling only 1.7-seconds shy of the top 10 in his very first race in Formula E.
With 18 points on the board, ROKiT Venturi Racing holds P2 in the Teams’ Championship.
“What a fantastic way to start Season 7. I’m incredibly proud of the team for what we’ve managed to achieve today. Edo drove a brilliant race – his overtake on Mitch [Evans] and Pascal [Wehrlein] will go down in the Formula E history books. We know that the key to success in Formula E is consistency, so our focus now switches to the next race tomorrow where the clear goal is more points.”
“It’s great to be back on the podium! I couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the season. My overtake on Mitch [Evans] and Pascal [Wehrlein] were crucial to my race – there was not more than 1 millimetre left between us. I’m very happy with that move. Today we have shown that we are competitive and hopefully, we can carry forward this form into tomorrow.”
“I expected today to be a challenging day because it was my first race in Formula E but I feel a bit frustrated because the car felt great and it was definitely capable of more. The learning curve has been massive and there is a lot I can apply to my driving for tomorrow. Throughout the race, I was battling with the likes of Buemi, da Costa and Vergne and I learned a lot by fighting with those guys – they’re some of the best on the grid. I would call today positive in terms of progress and tomorrow, I will be pushing for more. Also, I want to wish a huge congratulations to Edo and the team for finishing on the podium – it’s a big reward for the hard work that we put in every week.”