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Robin Frijns reckons a recent focus on improving his ABB FIA Formula E qualifying performances was the key to his first category victory, which came in the 2019 Paris E-Prix.

The Envision Virgin Racing driver won a chaotic wet-dry event in Paris, coping with damage from early contact with Sebastien Buemi and negotiating FE's first real in-race wet weather racing and numerous race interruptions.

The 2018/19 season is Frijns's third in FE after he drove in 2015/16 and 2016/17 with the Andretti squad where he scored a best result of third.

He improved his best FE result with second place in this season's race in Marrakech, but had only qualified as high as eighth - in Morocco and in Rome - before he started third in Paris, which he puts down to progress he made with Virgin in recent weeks.

"At the beginning of the season I wasn't the best qualifier and I really improved and made big steps," Frijns told Autosport.

"The team helped me and I feel really comfortable in the team. Sam [Bird] has been a really good team-mate - so I'm just feeling at home and to get the first [FE] victory now, it was the right timing."

When asked what specific areas he had worked on to improve in qualifying, Frijns said: "Just kind of confidence; I wouldn't say it's because I wasn't driving last year.

"Ok it maybe doesn't make my life easy in that sort of thing, but we didn't have any testing [for 2018/19 as a customer team] as well.

"All the systems we are having and with the brake by wire [on the Gen2 car] - its behaving different to how you think it will behave at the beginning.

"So I was struggling with that but I'm making steps and I felt like here in qualifying I really did two good laps - some small mistakes, but at the beginning I was always too cautious and I even hit the wall in superpole in Turn 10.

"I was really on it so I was really happy to finish the lap [high on the grid]."

Virgin team boss Sylvain Filippi explained that the work Frijns and his team had done was focused on the driver knowing "that he's fully supported".

"We can [improve his qualifying performance] in many ways," Filippi told Autosport.

"Looking at the data, having engineers trying to find ways to help him - and it paid off.

"That's what happened [in Paris], but it was last better last race [too] and he got even better still.

"It's all about giving him the confidence - that we know he can do it, he knows he can do it, he knows he has the car - so it's just a question of putting it together.

"There's no black magic - it's just for him to know that he's fully supported.

"Which he was from day one, obviously, [but] sometimes when you join a new team it takes time to get to know everyone and make it work."