Mahindra Racing has made a bit shake-up ahead of the 2018/19 ABB FIA Formula Championship season.
Not only are they switching to the new Gen-2 car, like all the other teams, they have also changed both of the race drivers. The team has chosen to call the new car the Mahindra M5Electro.
Pascal Wehrlein and Jerome D’Ambrosio will be the two drivers racing for the team this year.
Wehrlein arrives from a season in DTM, where the 2015 Champion returned, after his Formula 1 dream came to an end, for the 23 year-old racing driver from Germany.
Photo: Mahindra Racing/Shivraj Gohil|
D’Ambrosio arrives to the team after doing all 4 previous seasons for Dragon Racing. He won the races in Berlin 2015 and Mexico 2016, and has been on the podium on 5 other occasions. After finishing 4th in the debut season, he went on to finish fifth in the following season. The two most recent seasons has been a nightmare, if you omit the podium in Zürich in 2018.
It’s a bit surprising that the team has chosen to downgrade Nick Heidfeld to a test- and reserve driver. Heidfeld hasn’t won a Formula E race, but he has often been sniffing around the podium positions – when the car would let him do so.
It’s been officially known for the last couple of weeks, that Felix Rosenqvist wouldn’t be driving for the team in the upcoming season, since he has signed with Chip Ganassi Racing in Indycar. There are too many date clashes for him to do both championships.
The team is currently testing in Valencia, where the ABB FIA Formula E Championship is hosting test days for all the teams.
