Di Grassi: Tough for Audi to fight back into FE title contention

Lucas di Grassi believes it will be “very complicated” for the Audi Sport ABT Schaeffler team to fight back into contention for both Formula E titles in Season Four after his third straight race without points in Marrakesh on Saturday.

Defending Formula E champion di Grassi lost the chance to fight for pole due to a power cut issue on his car in qualifying, leaving him fifth on the grid.

The Brazilian rose to fourth early on before slowing with a repeat of the power cut, forcing him to park up at the side of the track and retire from the race.

Reliability issues also hindered di Grassi in the opening two races of the year in Hong Kong, leaving him without a single point in the championship and now 54 points behind early standings leader Felix Rosenqvist.

“It’s very frustrating to have such a fast car that we have this year, much better performance than we had last year, but now completely unreliable,” di Grassi told crash.net.

“100 per cent reliability problems, that’s unbelievable. We have to find out [the cause].

“If we want to win races and we want to climb the ladder of the championship, we need to find the issue. I never had such a bad start to a championship in my life.”

Di Grassi conceded his hopes of gaining points on his rivals were not helped by the ultra-competitive nature of Formula E in Season Four, with five or six teams looking capable of winning races.

“It’s much tougher now. We improved, but there are at least five or six teams which are in a very good level,” di Grassi explained.

“Everyone can win a race from that group of five, six, even seven teams. Even teams who were underdogs like Venturi with [Edoardo] Mortara, they were supposed to win in Hong Kong. So everyone is able to win a race.

“It will be very complicated for us to climb back, but at the same time, because everyone is competitive, if we win three races in a row, maybe we can get our hopes back.”

Reliability issues aside, di Grassi took heart from the performance Audi has shown when the car has run without problems.

“I have full trust in Audi to sort out the problems. Like they say, it’s easier to make a fast and reliable car reliable than a slow and reliable car fast,” di Grassi said.

“We have a fast car. We’re going to make sure we fix it, and we’re going to go for it.

“Until we have no mathematical chance of winning the title, we’re going to fight hard to make sure that we win it.”