Practice report
Formula E Buenos Aires ePrix
Buenos Aires ePrix: Bird tops FP2, Di Grassi crashes
Sam Bird set the fastest time in the second free practice session for Formula E’s Buenos Aires ePrix.
Scott Mitchell
Edited: Feb 18, 2017, 9:34 PM
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The DS Virgin Racing driver won last year’s race in Argentina and improved contentiously to head the session on a 1m08.792s.
That lap came after Lucas di Grassi crashed in his Abt Audi Sport entry and brought out the yellow flags at the start of the middle sector.
Bird insisted over the team radio that he backed off under the yellow, but still found enough time elsewhere to leapfrog Mahindra’s Felix Rosenqvist.
“It’s gone OK so far,” said Bird. “The car feels OK, we’ve had some issues to combat and I’ll have to combat them for the rest of the weekend.”
The British driver said the problem was “temperature-related”, having already suffered an issue with a faulty regen paddle – how he initiates harvesting energy from the electric motor – in Friday’s shakedown.
Marrakesh polesitter Rosenqvist was 0.165s slower than Bird, with di Grassi third ahead of championship leader Sebastien Buemi, whose second 200kW effort was ruined by the yellow flags.
FP2 had only just resumed when di Grassi shunted.
Loic Duval shed a wheel on his Faraday Future Dragon Racing car just after the halfway mark of the 30-minute session, which caused a red flag.
Before that, Oliver Turvey had clipped the wall at the Turn 9/10 chicane, and Jaguar’s Adam Carroll and Bird spun at Turn 5 earlier on.
FP1 pacesetter Jose Maria Lopez was only 17th fastest in the second of the DS Virgin cars.
Free Practice 2 results
Pos.DriverTeamTimeGapLaps 1 
Sam Bird DS Virgin 1:08.792 17 2 
Felix Rosenqvist Mahindra 1:08.957 0.165 15 3 
Lucas di Grassi ABT Schaeffler 1:09.054 0.262 15 4 
Sebastien Buemi Renault 1:09.127 0.335 15 5 
Robin Frijns Andretti 1:09.166 0.374 16 6 Nelson Piquet Jr NEXTEV TCR 1:09.213 0.421 17 7 Oliver Turvey NEXTEV TCR 1:09.265 0.473 18 8 
Jean-Eric Vergne Techeetah 1:09.314 0.522 14 9 Nicolas Prost Renault 1:09.472 0.680 13 10 
Maro Engel Venturi 1:09.596 0.804 18 11 Daniel Abt ABT Schaeffler 1:09.613 0.821 20 12 
Antonio Felix da Costa Andretti 1:09.742 0.950 14 13 Nick Heidfeld Mahindra 1:09.846 1.054 12 14 Stephane Sarrazin Venturi 1:10.140 1.348 18 15 
Ma Qing Hua Techeetah 1:10.320 1.528 17 16 
Mitch Evans Jaguar 1:10.480 1.688 18 17 
Jose Maria Lopez DS Virgin 1:10.644 1.852 17 18 
Jerome d'Ambrosio Dragon 1:10.884 2.092 17 19 Loïc Duval Dragon 1:11.486 2.694 7 20 Adam Carroll Jaguar 1:11.792 3.000 18
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