[INTERVIEW]: Pepe Martí on disappointment in Shanghai, his popularity in China, and the World Cup
Photo credit: Crystal Li/@crystall8ksat/Ampersnd Media
After a good qualifying session, a chaotic race and a disappointing result in Fomula E’s Round 13 race in Shanghai, we had a chance to chat with Cupra Kiro’s Pepe Martí on his race, his popularity among the Chinese fans, and his predictions for Portugal vs. Spain.
Q: You always make up a lot of places in the race, but today it obviously went the other way. What do you think went wrong today?
PepeMARTÍ: Today is one of those days that really really sucks because we were competitive. I felt very fast behind the wheel but… yeah. We were expecting heavy rain about 10 minutes into the race, (the rain) never came. We were very thorough on burning a bit of energy, for the gain of tire temperature during the safety car. Obviously it fell completely the wrong way. We weren’t able to make any good points out of it.
Q: You received a lot of love in China. Did you expect it?
PepeMARTÍ: No, I did not expect it at all. It was amazing to see. First, massive thank you to all the fans for coming out here in China. I already felt a lot of support in Sanya, but obviously I did not expect it to be this big here in Shanghai. It’s been amazing to see. I am extremely happy and thankful. Obviously very sad we weren’t able to get a good result. I hope that next year we can perform better and fight for at least the podium.
Q: Another big thing going on in sports right now besides Formula E is the World Cup. Do you have any predictions for Portugal vs. Spain in a few days?
PepeMARTÍ: Well, I hope we win! I hope Spain wins. I think we are a really solid team with a lot of very good players, so I hope that the guys can do a good job and get us into the Quarter Finals. We’ll see what happens.
Watch the full interview here:
