Mahindra's Dilbagh Gill: 'Pace gains must translate to points'

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Mahindra's Dilbagh Gill: 'Pace gains must translate to points'

Mahindra's Dilbagh Gill: 'Pace gains must translate to points'

Mahindra Racing's 2021/22 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship hasn't started in quite the way the Indian outfit would have envisaged. One points finish - via Oliver Rowland's Round 2 effort in Diriyah - from three races so far in Season 8 isn't the reward three top 10 starts deserve.

Team Principal Dilbagh Gill is keen for the team to capitalise on the pace within the car in Rome this weekend, particularly as the Italian capital is where Alexander Sims broke the team's silverware duck at this point last season.

READ MORE: The full Rome E-Prix preview

“Rome is one of those proper Formula E street circuits with its bumps and rough surfaces," says Gill. When you combine this with its highspeed corners and elevation changes you’re on a Macau or Monaco level of driving enjoyment. We stood on the podium in Rome last year and that’s where we’d like to return to next week.

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"The car has great race pace so there’s no reason we shouldn’t be battling at the front end. We’ve spent the gap between Mexico and Rome on the simulator working on our systems and software. As always, we’re trying to ensure we go into the race week with a good set-up. There’s still some work to do this week before we fly to Italy but we’re certainly on track with our plans.”

 

Sims acknowledges the team didn't nail it in the opening two race weekends but is optimistic heading to Rome, given past form. Since Mexico, there's been a seven-week gap in which the team have been working on software tweaks. It's risk and reward, says the Brit, but he has confidence the improvements the team is bringing to Rome will make for better driveability.

“Heading into Rome we have had a long break to understand some of the aspects of Diriyah and Mexico that we didn’t get quite right," says the 34-year-old. "We’ve got some new software updates to help us drivers to extract the maximum performance out of the car. As always, when you bring in anything new, it can be a bit risky, but I think we’ve done a good job so hopefully we can score big points and possibly be on the podium.

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"This was a very good track for me last year. I was competitive over one lap and was very unlucky not to win a race. We’re hoping for a good weekend but, with Formula E, you never know what to expect – you’ve just got to make sure you maximise and optimise everything and see how you fair on the day.”

"I can confidently say that the team did a great job to deliver a fast car over the 45-minute race," adds Rowland. "We’ve not yet converted these gains into points so this weekend we must rectify this. We’ve been on pole in Rome and took a podium on this configuration last year so we are feeling good and are ready use this as a springboard to get back to where we belong in the championship standings.”