Credit: LAT Images courtesy of FIA Formula E
Nico Müller is “very proud” of the ABT CUPRA Formula E Team’s huge effort in their comeback season to the Formula E World Championship, which has been a challenging affair.
Müller has been one of the unsung heroes of the 2022/23 season, with the Swiss driver having performed brilliantly in his returning season to the all-electric series. Müller returned to the championship with ABT CUPRA, having raced for the side in DTM, from 2016-2020.
His and ABT CUPRA’s return to the series was intertwined with the start of the Gen3 era, which started in woeful fashion. ABT CUPRA have sadly been the backmarker team in season nine, largely due to Mahindra’s powertrain, whom they’re currently a customer team of.
Mahindra’s powertrain has struggled for performance all season, resulting in the factory team and ABT CUPRA claiming the bottom two spots in the Constructors’ Championship. Despite finishing last though, ABT have arguably enjoyed better results and shown more promise than Mahindra themselves.
ABT CUPRA’s returning season started in the worst way possible, with Robin Frijns fracturing his wrist and his hand in Mexico City. As a result, he required surgery, forcing him to miss several rounds. The side introduced Kelvin van der Linde to replace him until São Paulo, where the Dutch driver returned.
Considering he’d never driven a single-seater car before, van der Linde performed admirably, and is now a contender for the team’s vacant seat for 2024. Müller had a slow start to the season, after retiring from two of the opening six races.
He failed to even compete in the sport’s inaugural trip to Cape Town, after ABT CUPRA and Mahindra chose to pull out of the event, due to safety concerns about their rear suspension. This point of season nine was very much the lowest of lows for both teams, and for Müller.
Müller and ABT CUPRA largely remained at the back of the field for the entirety of the first half of the season; however, everything suddenly changed at the team’s home weekend in Berlin.
The Berlin E-Prix double-header was an emotional and memorable weekend for the team, as they locked-out the front row of the grid for the second race. Frijns claimed pole whilst Müller had to settle for second, with the two drivers having made the most of the wet qualifying.
Both drivers and ABT CUPRA’s car just came to life in the challenging conditions, which saw the side collect their first points of the season. Three points were awarded to Frijns and the team for claiming pole, before Müller added to the outfit’s tally in the race.
Müller did sensationally well to hold on to ninth in the race, to secure his and the Kempten-based team’s first points scored in a race in the Gen3 era. The Berlin weekend overall, marked the start of ABT CUPRA’s fightback.
From Berlin onwards, the side looked much more competitive and grew in stature at each E-Prix, until the season came to a close in London. Müller, too, looked so much better following his top 10 finish in Berlin, with him having then narrowly missed out on the points in both Jakarta races.
Portland brought the 31-year-old and the team back down to Earth though, following a huge 27G crash directly into a wall. It was a terrifying incident for the Thun-born driver, who was extremely lucky to walk away from the scene.
Müller bounced back in style at the Rome E-Prix double-header, where he capitalised on the huge six-car crash in the opening race of the weekend, to secure his best result of the season.
The Swiss driver finished sixth in Rome race one, before backing it up with P10 in the second race. It marked the only double-header of the season where ABT CUPRA scored points in both races. He completed the season with a stellar P8 in the London season finale, to end the year P19 in the Drivers’ Championship, ahead of NIO 333’s Sérgio Sette Câmara.
As proven by his results, Müller and the team grew stronger as the season developed, to the point where they were capable of claiming somewhat consistent points finishes. Müller admits that the start of the season was “really difficult”, but that the side’s “amazing team spirit” saw them turn their campaign around.
“My first race I didn’t enjoy so much. It was really difficult,” Müller told Motorsport Week.
“We were struggling a lot with the package we had and we fought back. I think we had amazing team spirit, everybody gave their very best to come back and we did.
“I think we had a great trend going until the very end of the season that we were improving step by step, maximising the potential of our package and yeah, then you start to enjoy more as well on track.
“I always enjoyed off track with the team, with the guys here on site, so that has never been the problem. But you go racing because you want to win and we’ve gotten a bit closer to that towards the end, even though there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
ABT CUPRA truly went through a lot in 2023, with Cape Town having been perhaps the worst weekend the team has ever experienced in Formula E. Their “fight back” though, is arguably one of the stories of the season, and is something which Müller is “very proud” of.
“I mean, yeah, very proud of the team and when times are tough, that’s when you see who really has the right attitude and right spirit to fight back and I think these guys do and I’m very proud of them,” said the Swiss driver.
The big question is what can ABT CUPRA do over the off-season to enter season 10 stronger, with Müller jokingly admitting that his engineers are the best people to ask. Until season 11, very little is allowed to be changed in regard to the hardware, leaving Müller convinced that the best way of improving is by investigating their “software topics”.
“I think I’m the wrong guy to answer the question, I think that’s more the engineers who can give you a bit of an update,” joked Müller.
“But I think we mostly have to look into software topics because the hardware is what it is and that’s what they’ll be doing.”
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