No points for NEOM McLaren Formula E team in London

Jake Hughes

Qualified: P18 / Race: P11

"It was a frustrating day, underpinned by the foundation of having good pace, but not having a day that went cleanly and some bad luck. On my side of the garage, we should have been in the duels or at least in the top 10 in Qualifying. Unfortunately, my second Qualifying run was quite messy with some traffic, which cost us. I started in P18, so quite limited in what can happen from there, so I tried to stay out of trouble and save my energy. Before the second red flag, I was in a good position and able to score points. However, I was hit by another driver which took me out of the race. I managed to get going, but the race was done for me at that point. In the end, I finished P11. On a different day, if our luck had been better, I think we could have finished higher up, but it wasn’t meant to be. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, where hopefully we can end the season on a high.”

René Rast

Qualified: P6 / Race: P15

“Today was a disappointing day. We started off with a good Qualifying, where I finished P5. I had a good first half of the race, where I was running P2, P3, P4, had good pace, good energy and good strategy. I then had an incident at turn one with another driver and I damaged my front wing. My car ended up with some damage and the team had to repair it while the race was red flagged, and we were able to continue the race, which is a massive credit to the hard work of the team. In the end, I got a penalty and ended up in P15. We have one last push tomorrow for the last race of the season, I hope we can make it a good one.”

Ian James

Team Principal, NEOM McLaren Formula E Team

“The first of this weekend’s races in London – and the penultimate race of the season – has not yielded any points for the NEOM McLaren Formula E Team. Despite the natural frustration, we are not in any way despondent.”

“René’s qualifying performance was strong and this then translated to a self-assured and well-managed race, until the incident which took away a likely podium. The resulting damage to René’s car looked likely to be terminal, but a superbly executed repair by the team under red-flag conditions saw him return to the track to finish the race.

“Jake’s day was affected by poor performance in qualifying and from that point on we were on the back foot. However, we understand how to contain this issue and, again, can used this to good effect tomorrow.

“The team has already drawn a line under today, has regrouped and is ready to finish Season 9 on a high tomorrow; one more time this season to show what we are capable of.”