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On June 10-11, the FIA Formula E Championship returns to Tempelhof Airport for the third instalment of the Berlin ePrix. It will be an emotional home-coming for the series only German team, Abt Schaeffler, especially as this will be the squad’s last home race before it is subsumed into the full factory Audi Sport set-up.
The Abt team has a long history. In fact, over 120 years have passed since Johann Abt founded a blacksmiths in Kempten – the south German town where the team is still based - and began adapting coaches so they could endure the bitterly cold winters of Bavaria.
The Abt operation has evolved over time, but it is still very much a family business. Four generations on from Johann Abt, Hans-Jürgen is running the show. Since 1967, the company has been a leading specialist in tuning cars produced by the Volkswagen group; be that Audi, VW, Skoda or Seat.
The company also runs a very successful motorsports division: Abt Sportsline. The team can be traced back to the early 1950s when Johann Abt (grandson of the founder and father of Hans- Jürgen) took part in races at the Kempten grass track, where he went on to record more than 300 race victories.
His son Christian (brother of Hans-Jürgen) extended the family’s motorsport pedigree by winning the 1991 ADAC Formel Junior title and the B-class championship in German Formula 3 the following season for the family team. In 1999 Christian claimed the German 2-litre Touring Car title (the STW) championship before Abt switched the recently-revived DTM V8-powered series.
The DTM has proven to be a very fruitful series for Abt. Laurent Aiello became champion in 2002 before Mattias Ekstrom won two championships in 2004 and 2007 and Timo Scheider did the same in 2008 and 2009 – no other team has claimed more titles over that period
The 2009 season was a golden one for the team. Christian won the ADAC GT Masters and Daniel Abt (Hans-Jurgen’s son and one half of the team’s Formula E line-up) claimed the ADAC Formel Masters title.
For Season 2, when Formula E opened up its powertrain regulations, Abt teamed up with industrial giant Schaeffler for the development of its new system. The three-speed gearbox, single motor set-up it created has proved to be a good one, and only Renault e.dams has taken more wins and scored more points over the subsequent period.
Key Personnel
Hans-Jürgen and Daniel are joined at the Audi Sport Abt Formula E team by Team Principal Thomas Biermaier. Biermaier has been the motor sports director for Abt Sportsline since 2013, having previously worked in the company’s export department. The team has become famous for making daring tactical calls from the pitwall, which earlier this season allowed Luacs di Grassi to recover from last place – and a rear wing change – to win the Mexico City ePrix in spectacular fashion.
Drivers
Abt has kept faith with the same driver pairing it has employed since the start of Season 1. Di Grassi was the winner of the first Formula E race, and has more or less been part of the championship fight ever since. Alongside his five wins, he’s stood on the podium a record 17 times. Given that there have only been 27 races so far, that’s a remarkable strike rate of 63 per cent!
In the second car Daniel Abt has made four podium appearances, which included a great drive to second place in last year’s Berlin ePrix. He bagged the team’s first pole in Long Beach in Season 1, and was unlucky to have a second pole taken away from him after falling foul of a tyre pressure irregularity in Mexico.
Di Grassi is currently second in the points, while Abt is 10th. Their combined tally of points means the team is currently in second place in the manufacturers’ standings.