Techeetah’s Jean-Eric Vergne was left a frustrated man after a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane cost him a potential victory at the inaugural Marrakesh ePrix.
The Frenchman lined up fifth on the grid after an embarrassing mishap from the team left him unable to do a lap in Super Pole. The race itself was going fantastically for the Frenchman as he found himself well within contention for the win before he was hit with a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane as he was closing down the gap to race leader Felix Rosenqvist.
“I got a fine this morning for the same reason as in the race [for speeding in the pit lane] and I have never had this situation my whole life,” said Vergne.
“It is frustrating as we had the car to win,” Vergne continued. “I was in a position to win that race and I was much quicker than Felix [Rosenqvist] and good on energy percentage and, at that stage, [Sebastien] Buemi was far back and would have needed to use a lot of energy to catch me up. I don’t think he could have overtaken me.”
The pain didn’t stop there for the Frenchman, as Vergne’s steering wheel “went a bit crazy” towards the end of the race as he rolled across the line with no energy left.
“We messed up the race in Hong Kong and we didn’t score many points here today. I couldn’t take part in Super Pole because of a team mistake. I can look at some positives as we have a quick car but that is it now,” added Vergne.
“The team was running much, much better this weekend but it is still not good enough, obviously. I think the step we made from Hong Kong to here needs to be made again for Buenos Aires and then we will be in a stronger position.”
