CUPRA, SEAT’s sports brand, will race next year in the Extreme E electric off-road competition. The company has reached an agreement with the ABT team to become its leading partner, which will give the Spanish firm attractive visibility in one of the electric car championships with the most significant projection of today.
The Swedish Mattias Ekström, official CUPRA Racing driver, will be in charge of defending the colors of the young brand at the controls of the spectacular Odyssey 21, something that he will also do in the Pure ETCR competition with the CUPRA e-Racer, the other great project of CUPRA in the field of 100% electric motorsport.
It is interesting to remember that Ekström has also raced for Team ABT for a decade and a half in the DTM, so the driver has served as a connecting link between CUPRA and ABT. The Swedish rider has also become the third confirmed member of the Extreme E grid for 2021 after Sara Price and Kyle LeDuc.
Alejandro Agag, founder and CEO of Extreme E, reacted positively to CUPRA’s arrival at the championship: “We are delighted to welcome CUPRA on board as the first manufacturer of Extreme E. It is an exciting announcement that the brand has committed to ABT. Both are pioneers in the domain of electrification.
It is also great news to confirm Mattias Ekström as one of the series’ drivers in 2021, in the first season of Extreme E. His racing record speaks for itself. I do not doubt that it will quickly adapt to the Odyssey 21 ″. At the moment, it is unknown who will be Ekström’s partner (in Extreme E, the teams are compulsorily made up of a man and a woman).
This is not the only news of interest that the brand-new electric championship has generated in recent days, as the six-time Formula 1 world champion, Lewis Hamilton, recently announced that he will support the competition through the X44 team, named in honor of the number of his car in Formula 1.