Robin Friennes suffered a very serious injury to his left hand at the start of the Formula E race in Mexico City and spent several days in a hospital in the Mexican capital. He has already returned to his homeland, to the Netherlands, but so far there is no exact information about how long the rehabilitation process will take, after all, his arm is broken in several places, so at least in the next phase of the electric series will be Freins replaced by Kelvin van der Linde.
The 26-year-old from South Africa is a seasoned pro, but has mainly competed in touring and endurance racing in recent years and his best performance is a 3rd place in the DTM series in 2021. Kelvin has no experience racing at all in the Formula E and, in fact, will have to make its debut on a very difficult circuit in Ad-Diriya, whose circle consists of 21 corners.
He drove an electric race car of this class for a long time, when he took part in rookie tests in 2020, and it was a previous generation car. However, Kelvin has a fighting spirit and has promised to do his best to justify the confidence of the ABT Cupra team.
“I have never driven a new car and have only heard that it has its own characteristics,” he said. – But I tried to prepare as best as possible: I was engaged in physical training, analyzed all available telemetry and, of course, worked on a simulator based on ABT Motorsport.
The engineers of the team and Nico Müller, my partner, support me very well. Of course it’s important to avoid high expectations, so I just want to get to the finish and help the team fine-tune the car so that our project can progress.”
An added complication is that Saudi Arabia will host a double round of the World Championship on January 28-29, with both races taking place under floodlights in the evening.
“At Dirye we want to take the next step in the process of developing a new car, and we are preparing intensively at the base of the team,” said Thomas Biermeier, team leader. – Our task, of course, is complicated by the fact that we will have to do without Robin and we will miss his experience. Nevertheless, I have full confidence in our team and I have no doubt that we will show ourselves well.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
