The Indian manufacturer was forced to withdraw the Lucas di Grassi and Oliver Rowland cars in South Africa even before the start, as well as the Abt cars of Nico Muller and Kelvin van der Linde, due to a problem with the rear suspension.
Team Principal Bertrand confirmed that the problem was with a broken rear suspension arm on both Mahindras and one Abt after FP2, forcing the teams to abandon the event before the lights went out.
“It was a mix of three things,” Bertrand told Motorsport.com ahead of this weekend’s Sao Paulo E-Prix.
“Probably the specifications were a little below what was required [in termini di qualità]. The production, probably some imperfections, plus a track so demanding, bumpy and fast, that there was no possibility of error, and this is also what guided the choice”.
Perhaps on some tracks one could say: “Let’s risk it and then we’ll see”. But in this case, the level of risk was too high, which is why we took the extreme decision.
“The correct decision, you never know which one will be the right one. I think it was the most reasonable considering the different parameters, the type of track we were racing on and the level of risk our riders would have been exposed to. he can play with that.”
Oliver Rowland, Mahindra Racing, Mahindra M9Electro, in the garage
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
Bertrand said the issue was resolved in a reasonably simple way and only took two-and-a-half weeks to implement, and he is confident South Africa’s situation won’t impact teams in Brazil this weekend.
“It took us a good two and a half weeks to go through the whole process, from reproducing the fault to identifying the right solution, verifying that the solution is consistent and sustainable, and then moving on to manufacturing the parts” Bertrand added.
“It is good or bad what happened. It was a rather elementary problem, probably due to an underestimation in the development of the level of constraints and also in the validation plan that we had, which was not robust enough. Of course I am confident [che il problema sia stato risolto] and I’m certainly happy.”
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