Making his debut in the FIA ABB Formula E Championship in 2016, Maro Engel has had a career of ups and downs while the path towards his life-long dream of becoming a professional racing driver has been strewn with obstacles and countless hurdles. Now in his second season of electric street racing and having recently secured a career-best fourth place finish in Paris, our sister publication Motorsport Monday caught up with the German ahead of his home race at the Berlin E-Prix.
With the heat blazing down on a bright Berlin evening, Engel explained that his journey in racing began in the summer of 1991 in Monaco, far away from his birthplace of Munich. Growing up in the Principality, Engel befriended a boy by the name of Nico Rosberg, and it was his friendship with the Formula 1 champion in-waiting that created the initial spark that would become a central part of his life.
“It started with a little go-kart/mini-kart which I received as a birthday present for my sixth birthday which was obviously a great present and just fun at the time, you know, just really enjoyable and fun and I think that’s how most sports should be and start for kids,” smiled Engel, sitting on the pit wall at the Flughafen Tempelhof circuit.
“It’s been talked about a little bit but I grew up in Monaco so I was very fortunate from that end and went to kindergarten already with Nico Rosberg and became very good friends with him. His dad [Keke Rosberg] bought him a go-kart for his sixth birthday, and we’re two months apart [in age], both over the summer and so he asked my dad if he wanted to get me one as well and luckily he said yes!”
.jpg)
For Engel, karting was always a hobby above anything else, but after entering the club racing scene at an early age, he quickly realised that it was his dream to one day become a professional racing driver and as such, worked his way through the ranks in an attempt to turn his dream into a reality.
“That’s where it all started and as I said initially, just fun on the weekends, enjoying karting,” he explained. “From there on it was maybe we could do a club race which we went on to do, it went quite well so I thought, well OK, why don’t we do a regional race? So we did a regional race and from a regional race said, ‘oh, why not? Let’s do a regional championship!’
“So I did a regional championship and then in the end we went onto national championships and then international championships in karting. The more I was doing it, obviously, the more I enjoyed it and the more the wish and the aim grew to become a professional racing driver one day and ever since then [I] just worked towards that aim.”
After finishing in fourth in the European Junior Karting Championships in 2000, Engel took the biggest step of his racing career so far, jumping into a seat in Formula BMW the following year to make his debut in cars.
“There was what they used to call it Formula BMW ADAC Junior Cup before that [Formula 3 and Formula 3000]. That was my first experience in cars and [it was] a big step – a big change at the time when I was 15. It went quite well. I finished third in my first season, second season was a bit split, half a bad year – a very bad year – not scoring a single point in the first half and then with a change of engineer came a bit of a change in spirit as well and we had a very strong second half.”
After two years of racing single seaters, Engel’s career hit a metaphorical wall when money started to play a part in his racing and as such, his dream of one day becoming a professional racing driver seemed to be over.
“Then as you mentioned, Formula 3, then to be honest, I had an abrupt end actually because in hindsight, moving up to Formula 3 in 2003 was just a step too early and we didn’t have a full budget at the time and [I] should have done another full season of Formula BMW I think. It nearly cost me my career because we ran out of budget in four weekends in 2003 and from then on I went to uni, I went to study.”
Without a full-time racing programme for 2004 and with his 2003 season cut short, Engel was reluctant to sacrifice the dream that he had been working towards since he was a six-year-old child. He took to the streets instead, seeking a sponsor – an experience that the German driver holds with very high regard.
“I knew that I wanted to continue racing but just simply didn’t have the budget to do so and so just prepared my own maps and went and knocked on doors with companies. Definitely a very… Actually, a very important experience in my career I think, it just makes you cherish the fact that I’m now driving, or that I could drive again. Once I could drive again makes you cherish that so much more.”
After finding a sponsor, the green flag was waving again for Engel and he quickly pursued motorsport once more: “I managed to find a sponsor a year and a bit later for Italian Formula 3000 which was a great championship at the time. Some strong drivers as well. There was Pastor Maldonado, there was Toni Vilander, Luca Filippi, myself, and several others who were quite quick.
“Through good results there, some good races there we managed to find another sponsor which really gave me my real step back in which was in 2006 with British F3 with Carlin where I finished fifth in the first year in the series. [I was] learning a lot of new tracks, new cars, a new culture, a different form of racing but a very good one.”
After a string of strong performances, Engel caught the attention of Mercedes AMG, signing with the racing giant which would prove to be a decisive and highly influential moment in the coming years of his life.
“A great championship it was [British F3] and that attracted the attention of Mercedes and they offered me a junior contract in 2007 so I stayed in British F3 for 2007 and finished runner-up and from there on tested DTM and was able to, in the end, beat my competition to the DTM drive for 2008. So definitely, those years were the key years in getting to the professional racing driver point.
“I think certainly, that contract with Mercedes AMG was key to me and to my career and [I’m] still with Mercedes AMG outside of Formula E so they’re a great family to be with and obviously fantastic cars and great racing series in GT racing and DTM and many others so it’s a great brand and I’m very proud to race with them outside of Formula E.”
Engel’s switch to the DTM proved to be a move that would affect a large portion of his career in years to come, with the now recently signed Mercedes-racer competing in GT championships, DTM races, and Supercar events around the world.
“Yeah, I mean that’s been the main part of my career , you know, once I took the step from British F3 to DTM I pretty much only raced cars with a roof until my first ePrix in 2016. I’ve had the opportunity to drive many fantastic cars, as I mentioned from the DTM cars which are great and such a tough competition and such a great championship with impressive cars to V8 Supercars which was a customer project.”
Racing for Erebus Motorsport in a Mercedes E63 AMG in the V8 Supercar championship in 2013, Engel’s trip to Australia failed to yield the success that he longed for which meant that he jumped back into GT Racing from 2014 onwards.
“Unfortunately, it [the V8 Supercar Championship] didn’t yield the success that we were hoping [for] but it was still great to be a part of the project and it taught me a lot in my career and I certainly took all of the things with me from that year in Australia. And then obviously, most recently, the GT3 racing which I really love and we have a fantastic car in the AMG GT3 and you know, I guess the success in the GT3 is also what gave me the opportunity to join Formula E.”
One of Engel’s career highlights was his 2016 victory at the Nürburgring 24 Hours, completing 134 laps of the Green Hell to stand on the top step of the podium alongside Bernd Schneider, Adam Christodoulou and Manuel Metzger.
“Winning the Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2016 was amazing as was obviously winning the Macau Grand Prix twice and the FIA GT World Cup which comes with it. I’m hugely thankful to Mercedes AMG for giving me these opportunities and for also obviously giving me the liberation to join Venturi and race Formula E which as we now know, is probably one of the most sought after championships in motorsports.
“It’s [FIA Formula E] such a great championship, amazing drivers, really high quality drivers, great teams and constructors involved so for sure, I’m also very, very happy that Venturi gave me the confidence to join Formula E and race in this great series and go for success together.”
Now in his second season of competition in Formula E, Engel secured his best finishing position to date at the Paris E-Prix, claiming fourth place in what was a chaotic battle on the streets of the City of Light where Jean-Eric Vergne came out on top in front of his home crowd while Andre Lotterer and Sam Bird came to blows in the final lap of the race.
“Yeah, it was a good race [in Paris], I mean we’ve been saying for a while that when things come together we have the opportunity to run inside the top five and we had scored a fourth place at the season opener in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it got taken away from us after the line so it was great to now get another one and I feel that the team is doing a great job, pushing very hard.”
With four races remaining in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship’s fourth season of competition, Engel had so far taken 27 points from his 2017/18 campaign, despite having appalling luck when drawing groups for Formula E’s one-shot qualifying session format. Engel’s luck was set to change one day later when the German racer was drawn in Group 2 for Saturday's qualifying session, later securing 13th on the grid.
“You know, we’ve had unfortunately a fair share of bad luck in drawing groups. We’ve been in group one in qualifying for the majority of the season. I think it was five of the eight races, that’s tough because in such a competitive field, when you lose a few tenths just based on track conditions in every qualifying it just makes the day, and the race, so much harder. In Paris, everything came together.
“We’re very happy, it’s great to score that result in what effectively is as close as it gets for the home race for the team in this season since we’re not racing in Monaco in this year so it’s great to get that result and we want to keep pushing and hopefully we’ll get another opportunity and the aim is still to try and make the jump up onto the podium.”
Following the signing of Felipe Massa to Venturi at the end of 2018, Engel expressed his excitement to have the former Ferrari and Williams F1 driver join the grid for the start of the eagerly anticipated first round of Season Five which will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“Yeah, [Felipe Massa joining Venturi] is fantastic news, it’s great news for the series and the team! Felipe is a great guy, obviously a very accomplished driver, one of the best drivers in the recent past in Formula 1 so it will be great to see him in Formula E. He’s also a genuinely nice guy so yeah, great to see him join the team.”
As a Mercedes affiliated driver and with HWA AG becoming the 11th Formula E team on the Season Five grid, Engel looks ahead to his future in the sport which is rapidly becoming more and more competitive to get into, delivering a cool, calm, collected and focussed viewpoint while looking onto his Venturi garage on a late Tempelhof evening, the sun reflecting off the silver and red nose cone of his VM200-FE-03 machine.
“We’ll see what happens. Next season is next season, there’s still quite a bit of this season to go, there’ll be time to discuss and to see what happens for next year. Right now, I’m fully focussed on getting the maximum out of the car in the remaining races. I still feel like we’re still playing a little bit of catch up from the points we lost, as mentioned in Hong Kong and also in Marrakesh where we got seventh place taken off us so right now [my] focus is on this season and trying to get the most out of the car and then we’ll take it step by step.”
In Berlin, Engel secured a fourth consecutive points finish by taking the chequered flag in eighth place for Venturi as the driver’s best season on record in the all-electric championship continues with just three races remaining as the Formula E paddock heads for Zurich next Sunday afternoon.
This insight first appeared in Motorsport Monday issue 268 – you can read and subscribe by visiting www.motorsportmonday.com
