Maserati MSG Racing accelerated into a new era for Formula E at the Mexico City E-Prix, with the team narrowly missing out on the top 10 at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Facing the dawn of Gen3, drivers EdoardoMortara and Maximilian Günther gained invaluable insight during the Season 9 opener and showed promising initial pace following an encouraging pre-season test.

A challenging qualifying session – which saw both drivers fall short of the Duel stages –left the duo facing an uphill recovery in the race, starting from 16th and 17th. Edo advanced to 15th on the opening lap by overtaking McLaren’s Rene Rast, although the race was quickly paused when a collision for Robin Frijns brought out the Safety Car.

The action was resumed on lap five but was again halted one lap later when Jaguar’s Sam Bird stopped on track with a technical failure. The field took to green flag running again on lap nine.

Edo and Max overtook a penalized Dan Ticktum during the restart, while the latter also passed Rast, who activated Attack Mode, for 15th. On lap 18, an unfortunate spin and collision caused by a snap of understeer forced Edo to retire, leaving Max as the team’s sole runner for the remainder of the race.

With a late Attack Mode activation, the German pilot made good progress to threaten for points in the closing laps and overtook DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne on the final tour to finish 11th. Formula E’s ninth season will continue on January 27th and 28th, with a double-header event on the Riyadh Street Circuit in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Diriyah.

“It was a difficult day but in motorsport, you learn the most from your bad days – not your good ones. A poor qualifying put us on the back foot, but in the race, we came back strong, with Max fighting from 17th to 11th and finishing just outside the points. Edo was showing strong pace during the race, and his incident in Turn One was unfortunate. It’s a shame, as his pace was great. We have a lot to learn and there is a lot of data that we need to process from this weekend so that we can be in a better position for the next race in Diriyah,” said James Rossiter, Team Principal of Maserati MSG Racing.

Maximilian Günther, Driver of Maserati MSG Racing, said  This weekend wasn’t our best. After our pace in Valencia, I found it difficult to find a good rhythm in the car, especially over one lap. I managed to come back in the race and until the crash, I think we were in a good position, especially with our pace and on the energy side. I found it quite challenging to find a good balance on the tyres, and a snap of oversteer caused me to go off in the first corner. Overall, there were few positives to take, but we will examine our data closely, understand what happened and come back for Diriyah.”