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Drugovich rolls with the punches in Formula E debut
Felipe Drugovich had a mixed Formula E debut in Berlin last weekend, but wound persevered to claim his first points in the series.
Saturday was pretty much a write-off for the Brazilian, who was filling in for Nyck de Vries – who had World Endurance Championship commitments with Toyota – at Mahindra. A grid penalty – which included a drive-through penalty as he was unable to drop the full 20 places – for a gearbox change ahead of Saturday’s race set the tone, but he was able to race without such hindrance on Sunday, and took a seventh-place finish.
“The weekend's been, overall, quite difficult with many issues and penalties and not smoothing until the last race,” he told RACER. “But I think it made it even more exciting for [Sunday’s] race. You know, big thanks to the team for hanging on with me there, and making the job work at the end. [The] last race was actually pretty fun, and a good result.
As well as the penalties, and learning a new type of racing, Saturday’s race also took place in changeable conditions. With the baptism of fire out the way, the sun shone on Sunday, and everything aligned for Drugovich to have a proper crack at Formula E.
“The race [on Saturday] was completely different and not really energy saving, so I had to learn everything from scratch [on Sunday],” he said. “Even through the laps, I felt like I was improving.
“So that was something that I really, actually, I feel good about – to finish with this position and still know that I have a lot on the table, that's actually quite nice.”
More Formula E
But with two races now under his belt, the Aston Martin F1 reserve driver, who has been tentatively linked with one of the seats at the new Cadillac F1 team – but is not believed to be a frontrunner for one of the race seats – sees Formula E as a very real option for his future.
“For sure, it's a great place to be in the future,” he said. “Of course, I have no idea yet what's going to happen, but hopefully it's going to be an option.
“We're still waiting to see what the news is and the driver market is for every category, so we will see in the future.”
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
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