Formula E – Loïc Duval facing the electrical challenge

Before the resumption of the World ChampionshipEndurance, scheduled for April 12 at Silverstone in Great Britain, Loïc duval will debut in Formula E with Dragon Racing starting this weekend at Miami, Florida, for the fifth round of the championship. The Frenchman, who will not evolve in Super Formula in Japan this year, will find for the occasion the seat of a car, certainly very different from what he is used to.

“I like to take on challenges and opening up to new disciplines can only be beneficial for a pilot by helping him to become more complete, explains the Audi driver in WEC. The experience will be all the more enriching as I will discover new technology, the single-seaters being completely electric. »

Familiar with energy management in the WEC, the 32-year-old driver will however discover an even more advanced concept with Formula E. “Energy management turns out to be quite special, as is the format of the races since we change cars during the event. Are these new things that I will need to assimilate as quickly as possible? Even if it remains very different, I will try to bring something to the team, in particular my experience of the hybrid LM P1 with Audi where energy management is also of capital importance. Moreover, we can see that the Endurance drivers entered in Formula E regularly fight at the front. »

Loïc Duval has not set himself any particular objective for his debut in the discipline, but hopes to quickly show himself up to speed. “On paper, arriving in the middle of the season, in a championship with fairly atypical cars and facing drivers who already have some experience, is not a very simple task. That said, we saw that it was possible to achieve a good result even as a beginner. » Recall that Jean-Eric Vergne, for his first steps in Formula E in Uruguay, had won a pole position before fighting for victory for a long time before being betrayed by the suspension of his car.