Buenos Aires ePrix: Bird goes quickest in opening practice

The Briton's 1m09.913s time was slower than last year’s first practice session benchmark, which had been set by current points leader Sebastien Buemi on a 1m09.475s.

Bird was the only DS Virgin driver to take part in the session after Jean-Eric Vergne was taken ill overnight and is set to be ruled out of competing at all this weekend.

In the meantime, Daniel Abt placed second in his Abt Schaeffler FE01 with a 1m10.302s, while the NEXTEV duo of Nelson Piquet and Oliver Turvey were third and fourth, underlining improved performance for the team's car.

Buemi sat fifth ahead of title rival Lucas di Grassi, who momentarily stopped on the track before rebooting his Abt Schaeffler FE01 and continuing.

Formula E debutant Mike Conway had an impressive first session and was immediately on the pace, placing 12th with a 1m12.209s lap in his Venturi VM200-FE-01

The session was red-flagged after just seven minutes when Simona de Silvestro crashed her Andretti Spark-Renault, having hit a bump as she exited the pits.

Other incidents saw both Salvador Duran (Team Aguri) and Bruno Senna (Mahindra) run off in to the escape road at Turn 10 and Turn 4 respectively, while Robin Frijns (Andretti) and Piquet had lurid moments at the turn one hairpin.

Frijns later stopped on the track with an apparent software problem.

Yellow flags were briefly also shown for a dog which managed to get through to one of the escape roads. Thankfully, the canine intruder retreated before entering the actual circuit.

Practice results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	1:09.913
2	Daniel Abt	Audi Sport Team Abt	1:10.302	+0.389
3	Nelson Piquet Jr.	China Racing	1:10.717	+0.804
4	Oliver Turvey	China Racing	1:10.752	+0.839
5	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	1:10.880	+0.967
6	Lucas di Grassi	Audi Sport Team Abt	1:11.152	+1.239
7	Stéphane Sarrazin	Venturi	1:11.232	+1.319
8	Nicolas Prost	DAMS	1:11.291	+1.378
9	Robin Frijns	Andretti Autosport	1:11.429	+1.516
10	Antonio Felix da Costa	Team Aguri	1:11.690	+1.777
11	Loic Duval	Dragon Racing	1:11.948	+2.035
12	Mike Conway	Venturi	1:12.209	+2.296
13	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	1:12.209	+2.296
14	Salvador Duran	Team Aguri	1:12.343	+2.430
15	Simona de Silvestro	Andretti Autosport	1:12.432	+2.519
16	Bruno Senna	Mahindra Racing	1:12.440	+2.527
17	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	1:12.578	+2.665