Feature Image by Daniel Bürgin
Kelvin van der Linde made a comeback to Formula E this weekend in place of Nico Müller at the Berlin E Prix, but the weekend was far from smooth for the South African driver. While he enjoyed being back on track in Formula E after a year and a half, some bad luck left him out of the points in both races.
While he races under the South African flag, the Berlin E Prix can still be considered a home race for van der Linde, who grew up and raced frequently in Germany. This is his second stint on track in Formula E, having previously replaced Robin Frijns while he recovered from injury at the start of 2023. However, he is currently the team’s Reserve and Simulator driver, alongside competing in other series.
Heading into the weekend, van der Linde admitted that there was no pressure heading into the weekend, using it to get back up to speed;
“I’m happy to be here, I don’t feel any pressure. I feel super relaxed, I don’t feel any pressure for me to do anything special this weekend which is nice. When you’re driving, you don’t feel like you have to prove anything. I mean I haven’t driven for a year and a half, so it was really just about getting up to speed myself being comfortable, trying to have a good race without any damage and then give the car back on Sunday evening to Nico for the next races.”
However, a relaxing weekend wouldn’t be on the cards; a chaotic first race saw him miss out on points by one position, finishing in P11. The race turned out to be chaos for a lot of the drivers, with many sustaining damage and four DNFs. While van der Linde did manage to reach the chequered flag, he had sustained some damage to his front wing amidst the commotion.
“I thought DTM was chaotic at times, but I think this is DTM times 1000! Quite surprised, I mean obviously a shame to miss the points by one position, but at the end of the day it was really a lottery out there. It could have been anybody in the points.
“So many drivers were driving without a front wing, and at some point there was so much traffic in Turn Nine, so hard to judge the breaking point. Everyone was just crashing into everyone basically, and for me it was no different. I think I hit Norman which I really am sorry for him, for ruining his race.”
Heading into race two, strategy played a huge role in determining finishing positions. Unfortunately for van der Linde, the unpredictability of the race didn’t work in his favour either;
“I think it’s tricky one to be honest. It was a difficult race in both of them; difficult to predict how the race was going to develop, just try to hang in there both times. Race two, we didn’t quite go for the right strategy. We tried to save too much energy early on and then weren’t able to recover the positions once everyone started pushing, so it was just a bit too much saving. In general, I think just a result of not being efficient enough in the race, still struggling with some things in the powertrain and not where we want to be.”
Looking Ahead
However, van der Linde stressed that the weekend still had positives, and himself and the team will keep working towards the end of the season;
“All in all, good to be back in Formula E just try it out and learn. It’s obviously no points and the team obviously a bit disappointed for the weekend, but we’ll still keep pushing and see how we can end the season for the team.”
Looking ahead, the South African driver has a busy schedule lined up after the Berlin E Prix;
“It’s going to be a busy six weeks obviously with Formula E, we’ve got the Nürburgring, we’ve got Le Mans coming up, it’s going to be a very busy couple of weeks. But I mean I dreamt of this as a kid, so you kinda just adapt and have fun with it. For sure it’s stressful because you need to try and extract the most out of every race weekend which is difficult but yeah, we’ll give it a test and see if it’s possible.”
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