Ex-F1 driver Trulli says being a team boss harder than driving

The 40-year-old stayed away from racing after being overlooked for a Caterham F1 drive in favour of Vitaly Petrov in 2012, but he returned to the cockpit last year for the launch of his own team in Formula E.

"It's more of a challenge to be a team owner than a driver," he said.

"It's quite a difficult thing, to start a team from nothing.

"We came together very late compared to the rest of the teams, so we've hard to work hard at setting up and making sure that things go well."

Trulli, who started 252 GPs between 1997 and 2011, said that the unique appeal of being an owner/driver convinced him to return to racing.

"To be honest I was not missing racing," he said. "I did not drive at all during those two years.

"I didn't think about it at all. I'm just doing this now to help launch the team and make sure that it grows, and that we start this challenge in the proper way."

He admitted that the unique demands of the Formula E car presented some early challenges to him as a driver, particularly with regard to the need to monitor the car's energy levels during a race.

"The races are strange in the sense that in motor racing you are usually flat out, but here you have to make sure you manage the [energy] consumption the right way," he said.

"A driver like me was used to pushing all the way through a race.

"So it is very different, and you need to manage the situation and try to understand where you can push, what the limit is, and work with the engineers to try to calculate the right things do to."

Trulli, whose best finish so far is a fourth place, will carry a 10-place grid penalty into the next Formula E round in Miami for a gearbox change.