Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler's Daniel Abt hailed an 'incredible' race around the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez circuit in which the German driver claimed his maiden Formula E win after 47 laps of racing.
Abt qualified in sixth place in the group qualifying stages and was bumped up the grid to fifth for the race start through a ten-place grid penalty for DS Virgin Racing's Alex Lynn who qualified in third.
At the race start, Abt jumped fourth place starter, Antonio Felix da Costa, and was promoted into the podium positions when race leader Felix Rosenqvist ran into reliability problems on lap 14.
Abt took the lead of the Mexico City ePrix in the pit stop phase of the race, clearing second placed man Sebastien Buemi and new race leader, Oliver Turvey, going on to claim his maiden win in the all-electric single seater series.
"I hope we can keep this one," said Abt post-race, referring to the second race of the 2017/18 season in Hong Kong where he was disqualified from a race win through administrative error.
"What a fantastic race, what a crazy, hard day. Really not easy out there. But yeah, the car was fantastic, my guys did an incredible pitstop."
"I mean, we knew we were quick but practice is something different to race and I think they were even quicker than in practice. They [Abt's pit crew] just know how to do it and they deserve a beer tonight."
"I mean the beginning was a bit tough because I was stuck behind Sebastien [Buemi] and I saw Oliver [Turvey] go away so I felt like I had to overtake but it was not easy to overtake and then I could force him into a mistake," explained Abt, talking about his race.
"Then could catch the gap and then yeah, we, we got it at the pitstop."
Abt's win propels the German driver into sixth place in the Drivers' Championship, eight points adrift of Jaguar Racing's Nelson Piquet Jr who sits in fifth and 45 points behind Jean-Eric Vergne who currently leads after five rounds.
Discussion about this post