Paris ePrix – Dragon Racing are unsure it can fix the reliability problems it suffered in Monaco before the upcoming race in Paris this weekend.
Jerome D’Ambrosio was unable to put in a 200kW lap in qualifying before his car shut down, meaning he started from the back of the grid.
He suffered the same issue in the race, causing him to stop on track, and admitted after the race that the team could not identify the problem.
“We had the same error that we had in qualifying – just an electrical error, we’re not really exactly sure, otherwise we wouldn’t have had it twice,” he said.
“But the result of that is that the car shut down twice in qualifying and then the race. We’re also struggling for a bit of performance this weekend so we’ve got to work on these two things.”
With Formula E in the middle of its first ever back-to-back race weekend schedule, the timing of the problems could not be worse for the already struggling Dragon team.
“Obviously if you have a problem in qualifying and the same one in the race, with that little time in between you’ve got to hope it’s not going to happen.
“But we’ve got to make sure we find it and we don’t have much time.”
Loic Duval also suffered problems, having already been excluded from qualifying for completing more than the permitted number of laps. Dragon were able to diagnose a regen issue on his second car, but the Frenchman said their lack of pace is also a pressing matter.
“We just weren’t competitive enough. I would say for the first time this year we are not there in race pace,” he said.
“I was struggling with the car. It was not sharp enough and we couldn’t overtake anyway because we were starting at the back. So we went for the fastest lap but we were way too slow.”
Former Venturi driver Mike Conway will stand in for Duval in Paris as prior DTM commitments are forcing him to miss his home ePrix.
