Coughton racer Alexander Sims finishes fourth after impressive recovery at Puebla E-Prix

ALEXANDER Sims says his fourth-placed finish at the Puebla E-Prix was just reward for all the effort Mahindra Racing put in to fix his car prior to Saturday’s race.

A technical issue, which resulted in a battery change, meant Coughton-based Sims missed most of the first free practice session in the latest round of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.

However, the Mahindra Racing team worked hard to get him and his No. 29 M7Electro back out on track for the final minutes of the second session to gain knowledge of the long, flowing corners of the Mexican track ahead of qualifying.

Sims narrowly missed out on the top-six super pole shoot-out during qualifying, having set the seventh fastest lap time of 1:24.425.

During Saturday’s race, Sims gained a place early on and battled with Audi Sport’s Lucas Di Grassi for sixth place.

Taking attack mode temporarily put Sims down the order, but in the second half of the race Mahindra Racing’s efficiency came into its own and allowed Sims to challenge the pack ahead.

In the closing laps he charged past António Félix da Costa and Maximilian Gunther, finally passing Jake Dennis on the final lap to cross the line fifth.

Sims was later promoted to fourth as race winner Pascal Wehrlein was disqualified due to a technical regulation infringement.

This meant Sims picked up a solid 12 points for his efforts.

“It was a difficult start to Saturday with our technical issue in practice, but we recovered amazingly to qualify well and have a strong race result,” he said.

“To get fourth was incredible and a great reward for the effort that the whole team put in to get the car back on track and on the pace. From a performance point of view, we have been really good, but unfortunately executing a full race weekend has hampered our overall results.”

After a fine result in the first race, a collision in the second race of the double-header on Sunday unfortunately forced an early retirement for Sims..

Having qualified 14th with a fastest time of 1:24.179, the fast-paced Brit made excellent headway in the opening half of the race, climbing to as high as eighth place.

However, contact between him and Porsche’s André Lotterer caused damage that eventually put him out of the race.

“The race was going well and it was good fun climbing through the field,” said Sims.

“It looked like we were on for another decent result until the contact with Lotterer.

“It was a racing incident and eventually the damage sustained caused us to have to end our race. As always, Formula E events are action-packed and enjoyable.

“We came away with some good points, even if there could have been more to come from the weekend’s second race.”

The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship action resumes in New York City, USA, on 10th-11th July with another double-header weekend.