Jarno Trulli’s Formula E team has vowed to avoid a repeat of the problems that led to it failing to have its powertrain released by Chinese customs authorities, resulting in its forced withdrawal from this weekend’s season-opener in Beijing.

Trulli Formula E had decided to transport its powertrain to China independently instead of having it jointly freighted along with all of the other teams’ in order to give it more time to iron out glitches in the new unit. But it failed to get the system released by customs in time to present it to Formula E’s technical staff before the scrutineering deadline.

The series gave the team an extension to allow it extra time, but when the second deadline also passed, Trulli was forced to officially withdraw.

“We are very sorry to announce that we unfortunately, won’t be able to compete in tomorrow’s race as our engines and inverters are still at the Beijing customs, which has made it impossible for us to complete our cars in time for today’s scrutineering and therefore we will not be able to participate in tomorrow’s race,” said team principal Lucio Cavuto.

“We would like to thank the FIA marshalls for kindly extending the scrutineering deadline last minute. And we would also like to thank FEH and NEXTEV Team China for their support and help with the Chinese customs the last couple of days.

“We are now going to ask DHL Motorsport to handle our engines and inverters in customs, to be sent together with the rest of the team’s boxes so that they all get transported to Malaysia. Now we focus on [the second round at] Putrayaja and to ensure that this incident will never happen again.”

Technical director Maurillio Micucci said that he had felt certain that the units had arrived in China with plenty of time to go through the clearance procedures.

“We are sad to see that this has happened as we were looking forward to present the Motomatica powertrain in Formula E,” he said. “We worked really hard to be ready for the first event, and we never expected to fail for such an issue since the crate with the engines and inverters has been in Beijing since the 8th October.”