Hong Kong ePrix: Vergne tops interrupted final practice

The Frenchman, who is also a partner of the Chinese funded team, was 0.2 seconds ahead of Nicolas Prost in the #8 Renault eDAMS

Sam Bird’s DS Virgin set the early pace on a 1m02.724s, but the times soon tumbled and the Englishman placed third ahead of Mahindra’s Felix Rosenqvist and Andretti's Antonio Felix da Costa.

As we saw in the first practice, there were plenty of incidents with Maro Engel (Venturi), Jose Maria Lopez (DS Virgin) and reigning champion Sebastien Buemi all having trips down various escape roads.

Buemi thus finished the session in seventh position, just behind Nick Heidfeld’s Mahindra M3 Electro.

However, it was Loic Duval in his Faraday Future Dragon Racing entry which brought out the first red flag when he tagged the wall at the final turn deranging both the front left and rear left of one of his Penske cars. Duval’s incident shortened the session by just under ten minutes.

There was further drama when the green flags flew when Lucas di Grassi crashed, wiping off his rear wing while trying to spin turn his ABT Schaeffler after going down the escape road at tricky second corner. The Brazilian, who had just set a purple sector one time, placed 11th at the end of the session.

Just after di Grassi’s incident Lopez also nudged the wall, at Turn 8 in his DS Virgin entry, also losing his rear wing. Both pitted immediately for repairs. Remarkably the session continued with Lopez’s rear wing just off the racing line.

Adding to the debris on the track Nelson Piquet Jr. also suffered an off at turn eight damaging the front of his NEXTEV entry and bringing out a second red flag which conclude the session.

There was a slight improvement for the Panasonic Jaguar Racing team with Adam Carroll placing 17th and Mitch Evans 19th.

FP2 results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	16	1'02.350
2	Nicolas Prost	DAMS	18	1'02.611	0.261
3	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	15	1'02.724	0.374
4	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra Racing	13	1'02.825	0.475
5	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti Autosport	17	1'02.957	0.607
6	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	13	1'03.044	0.694
7	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	15	1'03.082	0.732
8	Ma Qing Hua	Techeetah	17	1'03.159	0.809
9	Stéphane Sarrazin	Venturi	14	1'03.230	0.880
10	Loic Duval	Dragon Racing	9	1'03.231	0.881
11	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	18	1'03.458	1.108
12	Oliver Turvey	NEXTEV TCR Formula E Team	21	1'03.466	1.116
13	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	18	1'03.609	1.259
14	Robin Frijns	Andretti Autosport	17	1'03.644	1.294
15	Nelson Piquet Jr.	NEXTEV TCR Formula E Team	18	1'03.676	1.326
16	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	17	1'03.831	1.481
17	Adam Carroll	Panasonic Jaguar Racing	17	1'04.020	1.670
18	Maro Engel	Venturi	18	1'04.097	1.747
19	Mitch Evans	Panasonic Jaguar Racing	16	1'04.336	1.986
20	Jose Maria Lopez	Virgin Racing	14	1'05.056	2.706