After joining the Formula E grid for the start of Season Four, NIO's Luca Filippi has admitted that the all-electric single seater series is "more difficult" than he initially expected although he finds the racing enjoyable.
Racing at nine of Formula E's ten rounds so far this season, missing the Paris E-Prix to make way for Ma Qing Hua, Filippi has had a turbulent rookie campaign, scoring only one point so far at December's Hong Kong E-Prix.
At the Zurich E-Prix, Filippi's struggles continued, with the runner-up of the 2011 GP2 series suffering from another retirement while his team-mate, Oliver Turvey, soared from last on the grid to finish in ninth place, extending his current Season Four tally to 46 points.
"It didn't start well from qualifying for both myself and Oliver [Turvey], starting from the back of the grid. Also in practice, because I had a little issue so I couldn't do as many laps as I wanted," Filippi told Motorsport Week post-race.
"After that, we were trying to do a different strategy so we wanted to go slightly longer than everyone so I was banking and saving a lot of energy and it was looking potentially good because the plan was: When everybody pits, then I had the energy to have maybe two full push laps which would have been good then maybe get some positions back.
"Then the full course yellow basically made everybody even. We had to pit and then the strategy was basically thrown away so after that unfortunately, as soon as I started the run on the second car we had a small issue and then I had to retire.
"I tried but unfortunately, we had a smaller issue with the front brakes and I had to stop so, unfortunately, that was it. Shame because, as you know, it was a bit of an eventful race after that and it would have been good to be in the pack with Oliver but unfortunately I didn't have that opportunity."
With Formula E approaching its Season Four finale with July's New York City E-Prix double-header event, Filippi reflected on his year with NIO, admitting that the series is more challenging than he thought it would be:
"It's very difficult. More difficult than expected and definitely very challenging and interesting," he said.
"I like it because the competition is very high and very professional. For sure, from a driving point of view, it's not easy.
"And also, in qualifying, because it's just one lap only and you have to put everything together so I think it takes a little bit of time to get really up to speed up to 100%."
With one point to his name, Filippi currently sits in 20th in the Drivers' Championship while NIO lies seventh in the Teams' Standings, six points ahead of Dragon Racing.
