Season 5 Santiago E-Prix winner Sam Bird is looking strong again after leading the first practice session in Chile.
The Brit set a lap time of 1:04.914s in the final few minutes of the session and had a lot of traffic on his lap, which Bird felt made his lap “scrappy” which he said over the team radio.
Antonio Felix Da Costa came home in second, one and a half tenths off Bird’s lap time for Ds Techeetah. The Portuguese driver was one of the first drivers to set a lap time at full power, but he was unable to set the fastest lap time of the session.
Edorado Mortara finished third for Venturi setting a 1:05:096s which was a strong lap time for the Venturi driver and proving that we could see a very mixed up grid to Formula E’s normal rankings.
Lucas Di Grassi ended the session fourth for Audi, with Nico Muller putting in a strong performance for Dragon Racing as the German driver ended the session in fifth place.
Jerome D’Ambrosio brought his Mahindra car home in sixth place, with championship leader Alexander Sims in seventh for BMW.
The Brit suffered an electrical issue with his battery in shakedown yesterday and missed a chunk of the early part of practice as the team checked that everything was ok with his car after his installation runs.
Sebastien Buemi was the lead Nissan driver in eighth, with Pascal Wehrelin and Andre Lotterer rounding out the top 10.
Jean-Eric Vergne was held up by Daniel Abt on his qualifying run and ended the session in 16th place.
Again it was an extremely tight opening practice session, as one second covered the top 18 in the opening practice session, which makes it anyone’s game for qualifying later today.