Turvey: “It’s a good step forward”

Oliver Turvey believes the team has made a step in the right direction with the NIO Sport 004, which he and Tom Dillmann will contest season five of the Formula E championship with.

“It’s been a busy summer for everyone on the team and this is the final test. You always want more time testing and we’ve still got a lot of things to try. I think we’ve made some good progress in the past couple of days and hopefully on Friday we’ll be able to make a lot more progress,”  said Turvey after the second day of pre-season testing in Valencia.

 “First of all [the Gen2 car] looks fantastic, it looks so futuristic and a little bit different to other single seaters. It’s a really cool looking car. To drive, it has more power than the previous generation. The 250kW power for qualifying is gonna be really exciting I think.

“Also, the capability of the regen is higher with the brake-by-wire system, it’s basically more technology and more control that we have. It’s a good step forwards in terms of performance and in terms of us being able to do the whole race in one car,” he adds.

Turvey is also optimistic in the new attack mode format, where drivers get an additional boost of power (up to 225kW) when going through designated activation zones on the circuit.

“I think the attack mode is a really good concept to provide some chances to overtake in the race. We have to see on the street circuits whether it’ll be enough but I think the concept is really a fantastic idea and adds a bit of strategy and different opportunities in the race.”

The 31 year-old Brit has been in Formula E since season 1 with NEXTEV TCR and has his fair share of ups and downs throughout his time in the all-electric series. A character building moment for him, he says was when he had to miss out the last two races of the 2017/2018 when he suffered a wrist injury during second free practice on the first round of the New York E-Prix.

“That was quite tough, It was really frustrating to miss the last two races and the weeks after was not great but I think my hand recovered really well and I had some great doctors and physio that helped massively and I was back in the car at the start of September with no issues so I think I recovered from that moment really well.”

As Turvey has already proven from his Formula E records, he’s not one to back down easily and the new changes ahead will be good grounds for progress for the young Brit and the NIO team.