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Di Grassi fights back against Red Bull's Marko over Formula E jab

Di Grassi fights back against Red Bull's Marko over Formula E jab

25-01-2019 18:30
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Jake Williams-Smith

Lucas di Grassi has fired back at Dr. Helmut Marko over comments the Austrian made in regards to Formula E. The Brazilian currently races for the Audi Sport ABT Schaffler team and believes that Formula E does have merit despite what Marko believes.

Red Bull's motorsport advisor had called Formula E "a marketing excuse" and added that Red Bull's priority was best served in Formula One and added that it was not on the to-do-list for the team.

Speaking to Motorsport, di Grassi fired back and argued that Audi, who had been linked with a venture into F1 supplying Red Bull with power units, learns more in the all-electric series.

"Audi gains more here in Formula E than in Formula 1," di Grassi said. The fact is that every car of Audi in the future will be electric, and we need to understand which factors are limiting us, which are the bests materials and how to develop software to control the engine.

"We have all this development of the electric car that will be used in the future. (With) the combustion engine you already know how it works. The interesting thing is discovering how we can make electric cars run fast, (be) more efficient and more cheap.

"This is what we do here. Not only Audi, but everyone. So, this is much more of a commercial development than Formula 1. This is more his personal opinion of saying: 'look, I don't want to compete in Formula E, I'm too old for this and want to do combustion races in F1'.

"F1 is still the most important category of the world of motorsport, nobody can deny this. But the future of the manufacturers is electric."