R1 - DIRIYAH - HIGHLIGHTS & FACTS
TOM'S RACE REVIEW
“Firstly I want to say congratulations to the team for the points finish - the result is testament to all the hard work behind-the-scenes and is the start of a new chapter for everyone.
“Today has been an interesting one on my side of the garage. The car has really improved a lot and we showed that with my lap in qualifying but we were an unlucky victim of Sette Camara’s accident and the yellow flags. I felt really confident behind the wheel and being in group four helped too so it’s a shame to have it taken away but that’s racing. We showed what we were capable of so I was happy with my performance there.
“Starting from P22, I knew it was going to be a case of just staying out of trouble in the opening laps and then looking to make my way forward as much as I could from there. The drive-through for the regen was again unfortunate as it undid some of the work I did early on but it made the race more interesting from there.
“The safety car on lap 18 was definitely useful in bunching us all back up and helped to bring me back into it. I hadn’t used either of my Attack Modes by that point so decided to make use of the first one when the safety car came in. The second safety car a few laps later meant I couldn’t make great use of that one but I still had one more to take.
“The last 10 minutes or so got really hectic, as these races often do. I just kept my nose clean and made gains where I could so to finish higher than where I started is all we could really have asked for and we’ve now got plenty of data to analyse to improve for tomorrow.
“As I said, we showed where we could be in qualifying so hopefully everything will fall nicely tomorrow and we can move ourselves further up the order.”
Image courtesy of NIO 333 FE Team
In association with MBP
