Nick Heidfeld hopes that Venturi have learnt from their mistakes going into the Berlin ePrix this weekend. The German driver has picked up a number of penalties in his Formula E career, but he insists that he can’t put this down to bad luck, as the team are working hard to fix the issues he is having.

The German driver has picked up a number of penalties in his Formula E career, but he insists that he can’t put this down to bad luck, as the team are working hard to fix the issues he is having.

Heidfeld had a strong start to the season and nearly won the opening round of the championship if it was not for Nicolas Prost crashing into him at the last corner. However, lately he has had a number of problems and penalties which has seen the German driver slip further and further down the order.

“We can’t put everything down to bad luck, obviously in the first race that was bad luck. I have looked at that again and again and thought what could I have done better, but I would do everything exactly the same again. However, if we were in front then that would solve our racing problems. At the moment, we are having too many penalties, whether it’s the team or myself with energy management problems or pit stop problems,” said Heidfeld.

Many drivers have had post-race penalties for using more than the 180kWs of power allowed. Heidfeld has been one of these drivers who has been caught out with this issue, but he explains its very complicated to manage correctly all the time.

“The team tells you what position to use and then it should stay under the limit, but for some reason it’s not that simple. Qualifying is easy, you just put 200kWs in and you have 200kWs, but in the race it’s not like that. It depends on many other factors,” said Heidfeld.

Heidfeld also mentioned that Venturi have worked out a solution to their pitstop nightmares that have haunted Stephane Sarrazin over the past two races, but he would not tell us what the solution was.

“We have found a solution to the problem we hope. We have found the reasons for this problem and I hope it’s fixed,” said the Venturi driver.

Heidfeld also thinks that the final sector of the lap will play a key role in qualifying, but the first two sectors are also tough sectors to get right on this track.

“The last sector is a difficult sector, but the first two sectors are also difficult, as you can take a number of lines through those corners from the work we have done on the simulator. What is challenging about the last sector is that it’s a big change in the rhythm of the circuit, for me the whole track is the most difficult track I’ve driven on in Formula E on the simulator,” said the 38-year old.

Heidfeld is currently 20th in the drivers championship with only six points. This shows you how much bad luck Heidfeld had had with post-race penalties and reliability issues this season.