New owners making Turvey optimistic for upcoming season

The NIO 333 team comes into season six with new owners in the form of Lisheng Racing, a partnership that race driver Oliver Turvey hopes will bring the team further up the grid.

NIO finished season five last in the team’s standings, having only taken three points finishes at the hands of Turvey.

Nonetheless, the Brit is happy to be continuing with the Chinese squad and remains proud to be a part of Formula E, especially with the latest additions to the grid.

“It’s definitely great to be continuing with NIO, the series is growing every year and getting bigger and bigger,” said Turvey. “There are more manufacturers this season with the addition of Mercedes and Porsche to the series, it’s only going to make the competition even harder.

“They are two of the biggest automotive companies in motorsport. I think the series is going from strength to strength and I’m really proud to be a part of it with NIO.”

The Brit acknowledged the frustrations of last season but is optimistic that the Chinese squad can put in enough progress to challenge further up the field.

“It was a really tough season with the new Gen2 car, we struggled throughout the season and just scored points in three races. It was a reasonable achievement, but not what any of us wanted. There was a lot of hard work put in by the team but it was frustrating for everyone involved. I’m hoping we can do better than last season.

“There’s been a lot of changes within the team in all aspects. We’re going into the new season with more optimism but we still have to see where we are. There have been a lot of changes between season five and season six, so we have to catch up in some senses, in our own understanding and we have to see where we are in the first few races.”

Lisheng Racing will help bolster the efforts of the team to develop the FE-005, with Turvey citing their vision for the squad as a reason to be excited for the future.

“They’ve definitely come in with new ideas, they’ve made changes in areas they felt they needed to. It’s exciting to work with the new owners and I think that they have a long term plan with the team. We can build up the team starting from this season, it’s an exciting future ahead.”

With a new teammate alongside him on the grid, Turvey believes that he and Ma Qing Hua can work together efficiently to aid the team’s development in the best way possible, despite the Chinese driver’s relative inexperience in the series.

“It’s been really good so far, I knew Ma from when he was reserve driver for the team. He only had a few races, not full seasons, so he’s kind of coming into the series as a bit of a rookie.

“So far it’s been really good working together, we get on really well and I’ll try to offer as much advice as I can to him. It will be good for us both to help the team progress, but he has a lot of experience in other categories and I’m sure he’s going to learn a lot this season, hopefully we can both push the team forward.”