Abt: “It was a horrible feeling”

Daniel Abt was left with “a horrible feeling” after his car stopped on the final lap of the race.

The German was set to take a sixth place finish, matching his best result of the season, when he car shut down just three corners before the chequered flag.

“I thought ‘ok, P6, it’s not the best result but coming from P16 it would have been a good one, for sure’,” he told Read Motorsport. “Good points. And then, with three corners to go, my car just breaks down and stops and it was a horrible feeling.”

Abt had enjoyed a good race up until that point, making up for a disappointing qualifying that forced him to start towards the back of the grid. The team isn’t sure what went wrong with Abt’s qualifying, but he thinks the qualifying group may have played a part.

“It has something to do with being in group one,” he said. “Getting your tyres to work. Because it happens to a lot of people many times, not just here. For some reason, you don’t get it done. Sebastien did so it’s not an excuse but Lucas [di Grassi], me, and Sam [Bird] were just nowhere with grip level and performance.”

Besides the disappointing qualifying, and the sudden stop, everything went to plan for Abt. If the team can solve the small problems he faced today, he could be on for a strong result at his home ePrix.