Sarrazin Set for DS Test

The former Venturi and Techeetah driver, who has already experienced the new car earlier this month, is primed to drive for DS Performance as an independent driver at Monteblanco.

The opportunity for Sarrazin to run with DS came about because the French manufacturer will depart its present team Virgin Racing in July.

DS will instead partner with Techeetah at the end of the present season but is unable to work with the Chinese team until its contract with Virgin ceases.

E-racing365 understands that with this in mind, Virgin Racing’s current drivers Alex Lynn and Sam Bird could not be considered and Techeetah’s pairing of Jean-Eric Vergne and Andre Lotterer were essentially blocked by Virgin from being utilized for the upcoming tests.

Sarrazin became the natural choice after both his recent experience of the new Season Five car and his previous relationship working for the PSA Group via endurance programs with Peugeot between 2007 and 2011 and also some rallying in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge.

While not mentioning DS explicitly, Sarrazin did admit that he did have options to test.

“There are some possibilities for me, but nothing confirmed yet,” Sarrazin told e-racing365.

“I did the test with Spark recently, two days, and it was good to be back in the car. Formula E is a great category and if I have any opportunity I will take it.”

DS Performance has taken delivery of two of the news cars with one being currently built up for the test while the other will reside in the DS World facility in Paris for a short period of time.

While not wishing to comment on who would undertake the first testing miles in the Season Five car, DS’s Xavier Mestelan-Pinon did tell e-racing365 that the main focus for DS was on readying the new car for the Monteblanco test.

“What is important for us today is to have a car on the track for the 26th March. This is the main target,” said Mestelan-Pinon.

“What will be important from the driver’s side will be to have a good driver who will be able to understand the requests of our engineers and to explain the feeling of the car and what we can improve on.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report