General
Audi: "We had no alternative but to dismiss Abt"
- GPblog.com
Daniel Abt let a professional sim driver race in his place in a digital race last Sunday and that has been a capital mistake. When this came out Audi, his employer in Formula E, let him know that they would no longer continue together. Abt later made extensive apologies in a video and Audi has now also responded to the dismissal.
Audi under fire
That Abt has made a mistake is obvious, the driver has also put on the carpet of penance for that. Many people have now responded to his dismissal and the general tendency is a bit that Audi's action would have been too rigorous. Mainly because Abt had no intention of causing damage.
Audi states in a statement shared by Racefans: "He has been part of our Formula E team since the debut of the racing series in September 2014, and our official factory driver since the autumn of 2017. In Mexico and at our home round in Berlin, Abt took two fantastic Formula E victories and scored a total of ten podium results."
"With Daniel, we celebrated great success and made enormous strides with Formula E. We are thankful for our time together and look back on it proudly." So much praise for the driver who has certainly earned his stripes in the Audi. Nevertheless, Audi's priorities carry more weight, according to later rules.
"However, integrity, transparency and consistent compliance with applicable rules, especially with regards to the past, are top priorities for us at Audi. We stand by our culture of tolerating mistakes. However, the incidents that took place during the ‘Race at Home Challenge’ sim racing series were not a mistake, but a conscious decision to go against the rules."
"That is what makes the big difference for us. Therefore, unfortunately, we had no other alternative than suspending Daniel Abt" On this basis, the commitment between the car manufacturer and the driver came to an end.