At the end of May, during a Formula E Race at Home Challenge, the fifth series of the virtual race, Abt ranked in the top five drivers, which had never happened before. A series of other issues (like the fact that he wasn’t live on social media at the time of the race and that he kept his face hidden) led to the discovery that he had cheated. He had gotten Lorenz Hoerzing, a fellow Audi teammate and a professional Sim racer, to race in his place and then tried to make it look as if he’d done it.
The scandal cost him his position with Audi and a mandatory donation to UNICEF, since the race was meant to raise funds for charity. For his part, Abt said his intention had never been to cheat so as to make himself look better, but rather as a fun experiment: to show his fellow racers that he could cheat and they wouldn’t be able to tell while he was doing it.
Despite expressing regret at his immaturity and lack of professionalism, Audi didn’t buy it, and he was let go from the team he’d been a part of since 2014. Abt is already making his comeback, announcing he signed with NIO 333 Formula E as a replacement for Ma Qinghua.
Abt will represent NIO 333 in the final six races of the season, which will take place in Berlin in August. Ma can’t do it himself due to the current international health crisis, and it helps that Abt is actually from Germany.
NIO is giving the new partnership a “prodigal son” spin. “When the possibility of signing Daniel for the Berlin finale was presented to me, it was an exciting prospect. As the saying goes in the eastern world, ‘a prodigal who returns is more precious than gold’,” Vincent Wang, NIO 333 FE Team CEO, says in a statement.
“In the end, after discussing with some key figures of the paddock, we have decided to give Daniel an opportunity to return to Formula E,” Wang adds. “We welcome him with open arms into the team, We hope the home hero will redouble our efforts to finish this extraordinary season in style!”
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