Problematic Punta race for Andretti

Following Robin Frijns’ maiden podium in the chaotic Putrajaya ePrix, Andretti were disappointed to not be further up the field in Punta del Este. Co-Team Principal Roger Griffiths blamed errors or practice for their poor race form.

“We had a lot of unexpected component changes on the cars which somewhat compromised our preparation”, he said, “With this single-day formula it's hard to recover from early set backs.”

Frijns attacked early on in the race to make up positions, and benefitted from Nelson Piquet Jr’s final lap crash to salvage a solitary point in 10th place.

“The race today didn’t go so well, we started with an issue with the car,” Frijns said, “We weren’t sure what the issue was. We had to slow down a lot in the first stint to get it back to pit lane.

“During the second part of the race, we had some inconsistencies in the reporting of the energy levels. This compromised our strategy. It wasn’t our best weekend, but we’ll review the data and see what we happened in detail so we can be ready for the next race.”

Simona de Silvestro was on the back foot after qualifying, as she was forced to slow down on her hot lap because of yellow flags for Jacques Villeneuve’s crash at turn 17. This meant she started from 12th, and her attempts to make up for this in the race were unsuccessful.

“Interesting race,” she said, “I tried to get a little creative in the first stint. I tried to go a little longer. It was really difficult and we lost a lot of ground there. So I don’t think that was the thing we should have done, but we’ll learn from it.

“The second stint was better we had to make up some ground but we had lost a little bit too much time there at the start. We’ll keep working at it and hopefully the next race we will do better.”

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