Solid learning days for DS PENSKE in Valencia, Spain
Valencia, Spain – Los Angeles, California, USA
- Official pre-season testing days have been completed in Valencia, Spain
- Running day 1 – on-track activity interrupted by a localized battery fire, incident efficiently and swiftly contained following the activation of emergency procedures
- DS PENSKE leaving the historic track with encouraging performances and significant amounts of key data ahead of the inaugural race in Mexico City on January 13, 2024
DS PENSKE hit the track at the famous Circuit Ricardo Tormo for the official pre-season 10 testing of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. The team was extremely eager to put the DS E-TENSE FE23 through its paces during the running sessions.
Spread out over 3 days, there were 4 running sessions and 1 race simulation, the DS PENSKE drivers were focused on making the most of each running session.
The first running session (Tuesday morning, October 24) went smoothly for 2-time Formula E Champion Jean-Éric Vergne and the rookie tester Robert Shwartzman.
Following a battery fire in a supplier garage unrelated to the team, all on-track activities were cancelled for the rest of the day and for Wednesday, October 25th as well. Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Éric Vergne took this unexpected opportunity to spend with the accredited medias from numerous World-Wide TV broadcasters.
The immediate action and application and safety procedures of the FIA on-track incident response team allowed the teams to safely resume testing on Thursday afternoon (October 26). These running sessions were the opportunity to face the competition again and the drivers delivered a solid pace.
The team comes away from the test program with a positive attitude and lots of learnings. The engineers managed to collect key information in Spain and they will now focus on improvements to put in place ahead of the inaugural race in Mexico City on January 13, 2024.
Stoffel Vandoorne, 2022 Formula E World Champion
‘We just finished in Valencia, finally we got to complete the test and recover a little bit of mileage that we missed after the incident that happened on Tuesday. It has been a very busy week of testing, a lot of things we had to put in place, team has been very productive. Hopefully we put pieces together ahead of Mexico City. Let’s continue to push to be in good shape for the first race of the season!’
Jean-Éric Vergne, 2018 and 2019 Formula E Champion
‘It has been an hectic week, but we made it, we have had 2 good days of testing. We managed to run our testing program with strong pace, we tested a lot of things and focused on better understanding the car. We learned plenty and we will keep our heads down, keep pushing and aim to score as many points as we can in Mexico City and in Season 10!’.
