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The Chinese-entered NIO 333 Formula E team has revealed its new car which it hopes will live up to the fast-evolving tag of the team being a dark horse for a return to the podium in 2023.
Its car, dubbed the NIO 333 ER9, was launched this morning with a new colour design. For the driver line-up, Sergio Sette Camara has arrived at the team from Dragon Penske, while Dan Ticktum will continue for a second campaign with the operation.
NIO 333 impressed several other manufacturers at a joint test in September at Varano in Italy, with the ER9 believed to have been among the quickest on track across the week’s running.
New signing Sette Camara believes that his fortunes in Formula E will change in 2023 and that he will thrive in a team that can match his ambitions.
He agreed to join the NIO 333 squad just before the final race of a 2022 season in which he finished a lowly 20th in the standings having been able to muster just a single points finish with a fighting eighth at the second London E-Prix in July.
Speaking in the latest episode of The Race Formula E podcast, the Brazilian said that he thought consistency at the start of the season would pay dividends after the troubled testing period for the new Gen3 cars.
“Being consistent in terms of just finishing the races, doing the laps you need to do plays a bigger role,” he said.
“Then as the teams get more mileage in the car, all of them should converge into having the same level of reliability, more or less give or take, and then the teams that have more performance should stand out.
“I definitely think that in the first two or three rounds, it will be extremely important to be consistent and to have the reliability in place.”
NIO 333 says that its new livery design symbolises “the continued close working relationship between NIO and 333 Racing, with the traditional light blue colour proudly represented in its livery, and blending perfectly alongside 333 Racing’s dark blue and red house colours”.
Russell O’Hagan, the chief operations officer/deputy team principal, said that the Silverstone-based outfit had been “working really hard on the Gen3 project for a long time now, so it’s a big moment”.
“If the car goes as well as it looks then we are in for a good year. The signs are positive, but time will tell and we don’t have to wait much longer to find out. I am incredibly proud of what the team has achieved so far.”
The team has collated its new challenger using EV tech specialist Integral Powertrain and well-known gearbox specialist Xtrac.
