Berlin ePrix: Vergne beats Buemi to pole, di Grassi only 10th

Vergne exploited the searing pace of the DS Virgin DSV-01 over a single-lap and just shaded Sebastien Buemi by 0.016s in a tense Super Pole session.

Buemi, in his Renault e.dams car, lapped 0.5s slower in the Super Pole session than he had in the earlier qualifying group stages.

The Swiss driver made a small mistake on his lap which was enough to lose the chance for a third pole of the season.

Delighting the home fans with third position was Daniel Abt, who claimed his best starting position in the Abt Schaeffler FE01 as just 0.041s separated the top three positions.

Another best qualifying position of season two also went the way of Bruno Senna, who set a 58.303s to start on the outside of row two in his Mahindra entered Formula E car.

The Brazilian fought with an upshift issue during his Super Pole effort but delighted his team in their best showing since the Beijing ePrix opener.

Senna’s teammate Nick Heidfeld starts fifth in his M2ELECTRO after making a mistake on his Super Pole lap. The German ran wide at Turn 7 and lost a potential front row starting position.

Title leader starts only 10th for crucial race

Championship leader Lucas di Grassi will start from only 10th on the grid after a difficult qualifying for the Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport driver.

Di Grassi made a mistake on his single lap in Group One and was forced to watch his name tumble down the timing screens.

The group stages of the qualifying period saw Sam Bird just miss out on getting through to the Super Pole session in his DS Virgin car.

The British driver was just 0.040s shy of the top five and will thus start sixth on the starting grid.

Rounding out the top ten will be Nelson Piquet Jnr (NEXTEV TCR), Nicolas Prost (Renault e.dams) , Oliver Turvey (NEXTEV) and Lucas Di Grassi.

Dragon Racing were disappointed with 11th and 12th, Loic Duval outpacing his teammate Jerome d’Ambrosio by 0.2s.

Simona De Silvestro took her Andretti Spark-Renault to 13th ahead of the Venturi pair of Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin.

Robin Frijns starts from 16th, the worst grid position of his Formula E career, after a glancing a wall in his Andretti car and losing time

Team Aguri make up the final row with Rene Rast continuing his impressive Formula E debut as he out qualified teammate Ma Qing Hua by half a second.

Qualifying results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1	Jean-Eric Vergne	Virgin Racing	57.811
2	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	57.827
3	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	57.852
4	Bruno Senna	Mahindra Racing	58.303
5	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	59.085
6	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	57.838
7	Nelson Piquet Jr.	China Racing	58.026
8	Nicolas Prost	DAMS	58.028
9	Oliver Turvey	China Racing	58.118
10	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	58.183
11	Loic Duval	Dragon Racing	58.298
12	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	58.501
13	Simona de Silvestro	Andretti	58.654
14	Mike Conway	Venturi	58.687
15	Stéphane Sarrazin	Venturi	58.740
16	Robin Frijns	Andretti	58.742
17	René Rast	Team Aguri	58.756
18	Ma Qing Hua	Team Aguri	59.301