Maserati’s James Rossiter: “You learn the most from your bad days – not your good ones”

Maserati MSG Racing Team Principal James Rossiter labelled the opening round of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship as a “difficult day”, with the team having failed to score points at the Mexico City E-Prix.

Ahead of the season-opening round at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, many had tipped Maserati to be towards the front, based on the fact that the Monte-Carlo-based outfit were incredibly impressive during pre-season testing. The high altitude, though, in Mexico City caused some issues for Maximilian Günther and Edoardo Mortara, who struggled during qualifying in particular.

Both Maserati drivers failed to make it into the duels, with Rossiter being aware that this left them on the “back foot” ahead of the first race of the Gen3 era. Mortara and Günther qualified sixteenth and seventeenth, with the German driver having made up six places during the race to claim eleventh. Whilst Günther narrowly missed out on the points places, Mortara failed to even finish the race, after crashing at Turn One on the eighteenth lap.

Looking back on the weekend, Rossiter has admitted that “you learn the most from your bad days”, with the team having certainly expected more from Mexico City. The side will look over the data ahead of the upcoming Diriyah E-Prix, as they look to bounce back in Saudi Arabia.

“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 were able to come back strong, with Max fighting from 17th to 11th and finishing just outside the points.

“Edo was showing really 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.”