DANIEL ABT deserves a place in Formula E after being sacked for cheating in a charity race, says his former Audi teammate Lucas Di Grassi.
Abt was dropped by Audi and fined £9,000 after he let a professional Esports sim racer take his place in the Race at Home challenge.
Di Grassi is still Audi’s only driver on their FE books and are yet to find a replacement for Abt.
Abt and Di Grassi had been teammates since the first ever FE race in Beijing back in 2014.
Di Grassi told Autosport: “I’m really going to miss Daniel in the team and I think he has the talent and the capacity to be on the Formula E grid and still have good results.
“We were in different career stages when we first met and we started driving in Formula E.
“Daniel was coming from Formula 2, I was coming from sportscars after F1, I am seven years older so I was more experienced and he learned a lot from me.
“He became a very good driver while driving with us, he definitely deserves to be on the Formula E grid as a driver and I think people underestimated his ability.
“He is very talented, has very good speed and in the last few years of the championship I think he was extremely competitive, so he definitely needs to be there.”
Abt has since apologised for his actions and explained it was simply a prank which backfired.
He said: “We had a conversation and the idea came up that it would be a funny move if a sim racer basically drove for me, to show the other, real drivers, what he is capable of.
“We wanted to document it to create a funny story for the fans. That was our idea on the day and our thought.
“We talked about it and how to make it happen and how to unwind it in a video afterwards.
“It was never my intention to let another driver drive for me, to get a result and keep quiet about it later on, just to make me look better.”
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