Driver of the Dragon Penske team finished both races in Saudi Arabia
The street circuit on the city of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, hosted on the last weekend the battles of the first and second rounds of F-E. Competing for the North American team Dragon Penske, the Brazilian driver Sergio Sette Câmara came back to the World Championship grid to, for the second year in a row, represent the colors of Brazil.
With a limited equipment in terms of performance before the rest of the teams, Sette Câmara and his engineers searched, in Saudi Arabia, to evolve the condition of the car in a qualifying situation. That way, achieving better starting positions, it would be possible to fight for a spot in the punctuation zone of the races.
The schedule in Diriyah had three free practices, two qualifying session and the two races. Debuting the new qualifying format of the category, the first goal of the drivers and teams was to qualify their cars among the eight fastest, so they could follow to the driver-driver battles to the pole position was known.
Sette and the Dragon team achieved, even facing a really dirty track of desert sand, to improve a lot the condition of the car and so, in both qualifying sessions, for the Friday and the Saturday races, the Brazilian went well and even got among the fastest during some moments. “One of the positives that we take from Diriyah is the clear evolution of our car performance. It was nice to drive and we were close to getting in to the groups stage of quali. In a qualifying situation we really took a step forward, and, maybe, in Mexico, we can surprise coming in to the groups stage”, said the driver of car #7.
On the races, on the other hand, the situation was similar to the one saw during nearly every race of last season. After a god performance during the first laps, the EV-5 model of Penske, suffers from a higher battery consume than the other competitors. Therefore, on the second half of both races, Sette Câmara had to save a lot of energy to finish the races and being so, finished the first and second round of the season on the 18th place.
“I always like to look to the positive side of things and I´m happy with the improvement that the team brought to the qualifying situation. Unfortunally, our car still suffers with the energy use, but if we can start from a higher place constantly, it will certainly be easier during the races, to fight to finish in the points”, closed up Sergio.
The third round of the Formula E World Championship will be disputed in México City, in a mix of street and parts of the Hermanos Rodrigues Circuit, on the 12th of February.
Photos: Disclosure