Venturi’s Felipe Massa was not too pleased with how his rivals drove in the 2018/19 FIA Formula E Championship’s Santiago ePrix where he had clashes with GEOX Dragon’s Maximilian Gunther and Nissan e.Dams’ Oliver Rowland.
Massa has had a difficult start to his Formula E career with Venturi where he is yet to finish any higher than 17th after the three races done so far, which has seen him involved in multiple incidents like he did in Santiago ePrix.
The ex-F1 driver was running in the points behind Gunther with Rowland behind the Brazilian when the incident happened where while overtaking the former, Massa was squeezed out in the hairpin after which he was hit by Rowland as well on the exit.
Gunther retired with an electric issue on Lap 12 – the same lap Massa was out too while Rowland’s journey ended on Lap 31. None of the drivers were penalised though but Massa was not very happy with the outcome.
“Obviously it wasn’t a great race for me as I wasn’t able to finish but on a positive note, the car definitely felt better – I really feel like both cars could have finished in the points if things had been different,” said Massa.
“Although it looked like Vandoorne caused my retirement, it actually happened before the corner when Gunther pushed me into the wall, this then led to Rowland having the space to come through and then we crashed again in the exit, it shouldn’t have happened.”
The Brazilian revealed that the German had cut the chicane at the start of the race and continued on as if nothing happened. He felt Gunther’s driving standard was just like that of a Formula 3 racer which was disappointing.
After the squeezing by Gunther in the corner, Massa and Rowland touched as alluded to earlier but the British racer put it down to hard racing where he argued that he was hit multiple times as well, which he took it and moved on.
“I must have touched about 15 times during the race,” said Rowland. Some people run into the back of you, and you run into the back of others – you can push a bit – it’s good fun. I fought hard and most of the time fairly.
“[Massa] got squeezed by one of the Dragon cars into the last corner and I followed the Dragon car through. I was down on the inside and I caught him on the exit. I didn’t really expect him to be there. We had quite a few scraps, which was fun.
“I don’t know if he’s mad at me and I don’t really care. He was winging a bit in the driver’s briefing in Marrakesh – it’s one of those things. You race hard and you take it on the chin. Maybe next time I’ll come off worse.”
It was a race of attrition in Santiago which saw only 14 classified finishers as the hot temperature caught out many drivers as it made the track undrivable at certain points. There were many who received various penalties too for unnecessary moves.
[Read: Santiago ePrix race report]
