Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Autosport
Autosport
Sport
Jake Boxall-Legge

NIO 333's Rome E-Prix points "a small victory" - Turvey

Turvey started a lowly 22nd on the grid, but benefitted from a chaotic affair to move up the order and was eventually classified seventh - helped in part due to time penalties for both Lucas di Grassi and Nyck de Vries for avoidable contact.

Explaining that NIO 333 had focused on saving energy early on, Turvey added that the team had been able to make the most of the opportunities that came its way during the race, having taken attack mode "at the right time" to move forward.

"We had the strategy before the race to try and save as much energy at the beginning," Turvey said.

"The opening laps were spend just saving as much as possible, and then we were hoping for a safety car.

"And it kind of came maybe a little bit too early, but obviously allowed us to close the gap up, and then we had extra energy for the kind of the rest of the race.

"I was able to use that energy then to overtake a number of cars, and I think we took the attack mode at the right time. I was able to get past two cars just at the final part of my attack mode. And then the safety car came out. So everything worked pretty well.

"We just executed the race perfectly. We took opportunities when there were incidents; everything worked out really well. Starting P22 and to finish P7, it's an amazing result. It feels like a small victory for us."

Oliver Turvey, NIO 333 Racing (Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images)

Dan Ticktum also picked up his first Formula E point after Oliver Askew was also awarded a time penalty for overtaking under the safety car, which shuffled Ticktum up to 10th.

The Formula 2 graduate showed great pace in the morning's practice session, posting the fourth-best lap time, but struggled with his brakes in qualifying and then felt that the incidents in the race had not been able to fall in his favour.

He however felt that his practice pace offered him positives to take away into Monaco, and paid tribute to the team for its efforts in finding performance in Rome.

"I mean, it was just a number of incidents that happened in the race and every single one of them hindered me; just everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong." Ticktum said.

"My [practice] pace was really good. I had a problem with my brakes in quali so I wasn't able to capitalise at all on the pace that we had, which is a real shame.

"I do think I could have been top five in group quali today, like the car felt really good. And that's obviously big, big kudos to the team for bringing the car forward in terms of just one lap pace, it is a lot better.

"I do genuinely think I could have maybe made the duels. I did a 1m40.5s with effectively no brakes, so breaking 50 metres early in some places. So, yeah, real shame."

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.