The Trulli team had a fantastic start to Saturday afternoon after Jarno Trulli took pole position for the Berlin ePrix, but as soon as the race started their celebrations quickly turned into a nightmare.

It seems that the problem Vitantonio Liuzzi explained to Formula E Zone about trying to understand the powertrain mapping which is related to energy consumption destroyed Jarno Trulli’s race and became a small issue in Liuzzi’s car towards the end of the race.

Liuzzi also had a problem in the pit stop, as he was unable to find first gear in his second car, this has become such a common problem in Formula E recently. The problem only cost the Italian driver five seconds, but the Trulli driver was in such a tight battle that he lost five positions which demoted him from sixth to 11th.

Liuzzi was able to fight back and finish in tenth place for the Trulli team, but he was promoted to ninth after Lucas Di Grassi was excluded from the race.

Despite picking up two points with Liuzzi, the team were extremely disappointed with how Jarno Trulli’s race went. From lap one his energy consumption was through the roof and the Trulli Formula E team principal Lucio Cavuto was confused why Trulli’s car acted so differently to Lizzui’s on the same setup.

“Trying to understand this powertrain is a waste of time. We don’t understand how two cars with exactly the same set-ups can consume so differently. Jarno’s car was miles away from Tonio’s car in terms of energy consumption, on exactly the same set-up.”

“This completely ruined Jarno’s qualifying effort as we had to ask him to save energy already from the first lap, as we quickly realised that we wouldn’t have been able to finish the race otherwise. Thus, we’d like to apologise to Jarno for this, as it made him look stupid when this was not the case at all,” said Lucio Cavuto.

Jarno Trulli was equally confused about why his race was so terrible. The team owner was disappointed because his team deserved so much more than they got this weekend after he secured his first pole position of the series.

“I had a very bad race today. The consumption was sky high already from lap one and I quickly understood that there was little we could do and that the race was be over. What we don’t understand is why my car was consuming so much when I had exactly the same set-up as Tonio, so clearly there must be something wrong in the car. Despite trying to save more, there was nothing to do but lift off and let everyone pass. So that was it really, race over already after a couple of laps,” said Jarno Trulli.

Vitantonio Liuzzi was happy to score points, but the 33-year old knew he could have been fighting for fifth or sixth position in the race.

““It was nice to finally score a point. However, it was really a shame as we deserved so much more. We had good pace and the team had done a really good job with the set-up.”

“So it was a shame as we should have been in a better position both in qualifying and in the race, we could easily have run P5 or P6. But we screwed up the pitstop as the car again wouldn’t engage and then when I finally got out, the wrong map was on the car so this cost extra too and I dropped five positions, said Liuzzi.

The Trulli team scored five points this weekend. Three points came from Trulli’s pole position and two from Liuzzi’s P9 in the race. However, despite points being scored in this race for the team they are still bottom of the team championship as their nearest rival Venturi scored big points in the race.