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Nissan Formula E Team shows promising signs in season-opening Mexico City E-Prix

January 16, 2023

5 min Reading

nissan formula e on track in mexico city e-prix

Fenestraz qualifies for Duels in first race of Gen3 era while Nato unlucky to be caught up in racing incident

Nissan Formula E Team showed strong potential in the opening race of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship thanks to Sacha Fenestraz’s excellent qualifying display at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

 

The Franco-Argentine racer put in a good performance in the Group Stage of qualifying to progress to the Duels, narrowly missing out on a semi-final berth. Starting eighth, Fenestraz gained a position on the opening lap with an excellent move, and ran as high as sixth, proving his ability in his first race for the team. In a tightly contested race, the 23-year-old continued to set a good pace, before a system issue regarding energy management saw him drop out of the top-10 during the closing stages.

 

Norman Nato also had a positive start in the #17 car, but was caught up in an incident and forced to retire on the first lap.

the mecico city formula e race track

“It’s a little bit frustrating because we could see throughout the weekend that the car was strong,” said Tommaso Volpe, general manager Nissan Formula E and managing director Nissan Formula E Team. “Sacha did an amazing job in qualifying to reach the duels, he showed great potential and almost made it into the semi-finals. In the race he was running well and putting in good lap times before an energy management issue at the end of the race. His performance deserved points, so we are obviously disappointed, but we have to move on to the next event and look for better there. We know we have factors to improve on but it’s good to see that we are starting from a strong base, so we will analyze what happened today and build towards stronger results in Diriyah.”

 

Season 9 of Formula E returns at the end of the month, with the double-header in Diriyah taking place on 27-28 January.

Sacha Fenestraz

“I was really happy to make it through to the Duels in qualifying, the competition is really tough so we did a great job and almost made it into the semi-final. The race was a bit frustrating, as we definitely had the potential to score points. Towards the end, we had an issue with the energy management. We’ll look to find out what happened and correct it for the next race, but despite not scoring points it was a positive weekend, we made a big step between FP2 and qualifying and we know the areas we need to improve on.”

Norman Nato

“It wasn’t the race we expected or hoped for. In FP2 we were feeling positive, the pace was good but we didn’t quite get the set-up right for qualifying, which cost us a bit of time. In the race we were hit on Lap 1 and had to retire with damage. It’s frustrating because we need all the track time possible to learn about the new car, but we still leave Mexico with more data and more understanding on what we need to do to improve. We’ll put this one behind us and turn our attention to preparing for Diriyah in two weeks’ time.”