Season 5 championship challenger Antonio Felix da Costa has said that his BMW i Andretti Motorsport team cannot be happy with its performance at its home race following a dominant Audi victory.
The BMW i Andretti squad secured its first double points finish of the season at the Berlin E-Prix, securing a haul of 18 points to advance its championship hopes which have been somewhat curtailed since the start of Formula E's present campaign.
For da Costa, a seventh place starting position ended with fourth at the chequered flag, with the Portuguese racer missing out on a potential podium position after briefly running in second place, getting re-overtaken by Sebastien Buemi and later passed by DS Techeetah's Jean-Eric Vergne.
With team-mate Alexander Sims taking seventh after fighting from 11th, the result marked the team's joint largest haul of points since the season-opening Ad Diriyah E-Prix, however, with Audi winning through the services of Lucas di Grassi, da Costa said that the result was something that BMW cannot be happy with.
In motorsport and the automotive industry, BMIW is a direct competitor of Audi, with both manufacturers being closely matched in terms of car sales over the course of 2018, with BMW selling over 1.9 million cars worldwide last year compared to Audi's 1.8 million.
"It’s our home race and it’s also Audi’s home race and they won the race so we can’t be extremely happy with that," da Costa told Motorsport Week.
"I had a very good first half of the race where we kept moving forwards, being super smart, being very efficient but the after the Full Course Yellow, the race became flat-out and I suffered from too much understeer in the car.
"I just wasn’t quick enough so I ended up losing two positions and losing out on a podium which obviously leaves me a bit sad.
"All in all, good points on the board, we lost points to people we could not lose points to which is also hard but it is what it is. We keep going and we keep fighting.
"Had the race been green all of the way, we could have even challenged Lucas [di Grassi] I think," he added. "I was coming for him once I was running in second. It’s ok. It’s the rules.”
After the Berlin E-Prix, da Costa currently sits in fourth in the Drivers' Championship with 82 points, 20 points adrift of Jean-Eric Vergne's current lead with only three races remaining although 87 points remain on offer.
BMW meanwhile is sixth in the Teams; Standings with 106 points, 11 points behind the fifth-placed Mahindra Racing while DS Techeetah continues to lead with 188 points. BMW rivals Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler moved into second after the Berlin E-Prix, overtaking Envision Virgin Racing.
Formula E's fifth season of competition will continue on June 22 with the inaugural Bern E-Prix as the all-electric single-seater series returns to Switzerland for the second time in two seasons.
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