NEXTEV TCR struggled throughout the Putrajaya ePrix, but with a little bit of luck and strong energy management by Nelson Piquet Jr, the Chinese team walked away with four championship points.

Both Piquet Jr and Oliver Turvey had horrible qualifying sessions, as they started the race down in 16th and 17th place on the grid.

The two drivers were able to gain some places at the start with Jean-Eric Vergne and Nick Heidfeld crashing into each other at turn one.

However, Turvey’s race would only last five laps as a stuck throttle caused the Brit to crash going into turn five. The 28-year old had the problem from lap one, which made the car nearly impossible to drive.

“I had a sticking throttle from the start that meant that when I lifted off the throttle the motor was still driving the car, so it was impossible to drive really.

“Then the car switched off in the hairpin on the first two laps, so I was trying to manage and get round the laps to swap cars as soon as possible. But then I came to turn 5, which is a tight corner, and it just drove me straight forward into the wall, unfortunately,” said Turvey.

Due to Piquet’s excellent energy management, the Brazilian gave himself the chance to attack in the closing stages of the race.

The champion climbed into the points scoring positions after coming out 13th once he completed his stop. Piquet knows that the problems that the other team had helped them massively today, but admitted that its the best the team can do at this stage.

“We did a bit of a different strategy and went longer with the first car. We got a bit lucky as a lot of cars broke down, and there were a lot of problems ahead of us. I think that’s going to be the plan for the whole year.

“Oliver did it in Beijing and got some points, and I did it here. That’s our reality, to try to score points where we can. It’s tough coming off the back of a world championship, but we’ll keep going and doing the best possible,” said Piquet.

Team Principal Steven Lu, also admitted that the team have a lot of work to do to understand their problems, as well as believing they were lucky to walk away with any points from the first two rounds.

“We know we have a lot to do, but luckily we have scored points in the first two races despite a tough start to the season. We will keep working hard to find a solution to the powertrain issues we’ve been having and hopefully we’ll make more progress for the next race,” said Lu.