Eriksson, Envision team encouraged by progress in Miami

Joel Eriksson left Miami in a positive mood after securing the best finish of his Formula E career.

Already on a high from his best qualifying result to date – sixth following a first-ever Duels appearance – Eriksson remained with the breakaway lead pack to eventually bring home his Envision Racing car fourth.

“Definitely a very, very strong weekend,” he told RACER. “We have been fast throughout the whole weekend, starting off in free practice and then moving on to qualifying, making the Duels.

“The pace and the performance has been there all weekend and finishing off with a P4 and a strong result gives me a little bit of a boost of self confidence, especially [when] there was some wet conditions, [it] also shows that we can be strong and fast in the wet.”

It wasn’t just Eriksson that showed well, with teammate Sebastien Buemi also in the points in seventh despite starting at the back of the grid owing to penalties. And in the Rookie Free Practice Session at the start of the event, Zak O’Sullivan put Envision at the top of the board, too, something that Eriksson says helped himself and Buemi take a step forward.

“It's definitely beneficial,” he said. “It always gives us some proper data and Zak can give us some valuable inputs from the rookie point of view, so it definitely helped.”

In the race, Eriksson remained near the front but was consuming more energy than the others around him. Yet despite that and the need to save later on, he didn’t end up falling too far back, with it being all part of the plan in the wet race where energy consumption wasn’t as much of a factor compared to a dry one.”

“I was in a kind of different strategy from the driver point of view, which luckily paid off in the end,” he said. “I was using more energy in the beginning, I was aware of it, but then it worked out in the end, because I planned to get it back in the middle of the race.

Next up is Jeddah, a track where Eriksson hasn’t raced before. While he expects that to put him at a bit of a disadvantage, his strong weekend in Miami has left him encouraged.

“It's going to be challenging,” he said. “Most drivers, or all of the drivers, have been there before, so we're going to start a little bit on the back foot. But we're going to be working hard in the simulator to try to be as good and as much up to pace, and it's obviously going to be a different track from the strategy point of view. Hopefully we will not be starting too much in the background.”