Nelson Piquet Jr. and Oliver Turvey walk away from the Hong Kong ePrix wondering what could’ve been after locking out the front row in qualifying.
In a hectic qualifying session earlier in the day, Piquet Jr. took pole whilst Turvey ensured it would be an unexpected NextEV NIO lockout; holding off both DS Virgin cars and defending champion Sebastien Buemi. However, things fell apart in the race for both drivers, as they were only able to muster a few points on a day that promised so much more.
Piquet Jr. should count himself unlucky given the circumstances that ruined his race. Starting on pole, the Brazilian led the early stages of the race until he came across Jose Maria Lopez, who had ploughed his damaged DS Virgin into the barrier at the exit of turn four – leaving Piquet Jr. no option but to take evasive action to avoid inevitable contact. The evasive action dropped Piquet Jr. down the order two places, which was followed up by a wrong call on when to pit, dropping him further down the order and he couldn’t recover.
Instead of walking away with a victory, the Brazilian left Hong Kong with only three points for qualifying on pole.
“It was obviously a mixed day for us.” Said the Brazilian. “The qualifying result was great for both Oliver and myself, but the race result is disappointing. The start went well and I was able to create a good gap but then I had nowhere to go to avoid Lopez – it could have happened to anyone though. We were all bunched up under the safety car and we simply made the pitstop on the wrong lap.”
Oliver Turvey didn’t have the best of starts compared to his teammate, as the Brit fell down the order early on, but despite this he was able to recover to eighth place.
Discussing his day, Turvey mentioned how good qualifying was, but also highlighted how the team have to work on efficiency for the next round in Marrakech: “NextEV have put a huge effort into the car and it felt great to nail my qualifying lap and be on the front row. We clearly have good pace in qualifying, which is encouraging, but we need to look at our efficiency and how we can save more energy over the race. We have both come away with points from this race, which is a positive start. Now we must work on building on the points in Marrakech.”
Piquet Jr. also highlighted efficiency & strategy issues in his post-race comments: “For us, we have to concentrate on working on maximising what we can get out of the car and strategy. I think looking forward to Marrakech we will qualify well and we just have to work hard to prepare for the race as a team. The whole team has been working so hard, and we are going to keep pushing.”
