Buemi tops first day of Donington Formula E testing

The Renault e.dams driver clocked the quickest time of 1m30.143s, and was 0.751s clear of Mahindra's Nick Heidfeld, who pushed Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport's Lucas di Grassi to third.

The German was able to come back after causing a red flag at the beginning of the afternoon session, when he spun at Redgate, recording his best time just after the chequered flag fell.

DS Virgin's Sam Bird ended fourth, and was the first one to dip into the 1m30s, before di Grassi, Buemi and Heidfeld followed suit.

Behind the top four, was morning's pacesetter Jerome d'Ambrosio in the Dragon Racing, ahead of Formula E's new team Jaguar Racing with Alex Lynn behind the wheel.

The Williams development driver is one of the three drivers the British marque is trying out for a potential seat in season three, alongside Adam Carroll.

Following Lynn was reigning European Formula 3 champion Felix Rosenqvist (Mahindra) in seventh, keeping the other Abt Audi of Daniel Abt in eighth.

Carroll and DS Virgin's Jose Maria Lopez, both returning to single-seaters, rounded off the top 10.

While six teams secured the top 12 positions, the bottom six was shared among the drivers of Andretti, Techeetah (running only a single car for Ma Qing Hua), NextEV (likewise only running Nelson Piquet Jr) and Venturi.

There were a total of eight red-flag stoppages, two in the morning session and six in the afternoon.

On Wednesday, Mitch Evans takes over the Jaguar seat alongside Carroll - before Harry Tincknell gets his chance behind the wheel on Thursday - while Oliver Turvey will drive for NextEV, handing over to Dean Stoneman for the final day.

Jean-Eric Vergne will also make his first public appearance for Techeetah, sharing the team's sole car with teammate Ma for the two remaining days.

Day 1 standings:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	Sebastien Buemi	Renault e.dams	1:30.143
2	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	1:30.894
3	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	1:30.947
4	Sam Bird	DS Virgin Racing	1:30.992
5	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	1:31.203
6	Alex Lynn	Jaguar Racing	1:31.409
7	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra Racing	1:31.563
8	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	1:31.712
9	Adam Carroll	Jaguar Racing	1:31.717
10	Jose Maria Lopez	DS Virgin Racing	1:31.733
11	Nicolas Prost	Renault e.dams	1:32.309
12	Loic Duval	Dragon Racing	1:33.060
13	Robin Frijns	Andretti	1:33.062
14	Ma Qing Hua	Techeetah	1:33.147
15	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti	1:33.252
16	Nelson Piquet Jr	NextEV	1:33.284
17	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	1:33.287
18	Maro Engel	Venturi	1:34.120