Mexico City ePrix: Buemi tops FP1 by half a second

The Renault e.dams driver claimed the top spot with a time of 1m02.222s at full 200Kw power despite being held up by Fprmula E debutant Esteban Gutierrez.

Buemi, who is chasing a fourth consecutive Formula E victory after completing a 16-hour commute from Monza to Mexico City overnight, headed Faraday Future Dragon teammates Loic Duval and Jerome d’Ambrosio by just over half a second on a remarkably dusty circuit.

Jean-Eric Vergne ended the first session in fourth position as the fastest of the 170Kw drivers. However, the Frenchman was placed under investigation for allegedly cutting the final chicane with his Renault-powered car.                                               

The Techeetah driver, along with new teammate Gutierrez, was handed a three-place suspended grid penalty after exceeding the power allowance in Friday’s shakedown session.

Gutierrez ended the session in 19th position, as he continued to adapt to the all-electric formula.

Robin Frijns hustled his Andretti ATEC-02 to fifth place on a 200Kw lap, the Dutchman heading Sam Bird (DS Virgin), Stephane Sarrazin (Venturi), and the Abt Audi duo of Lucas di Grassi and Daniel Abt.

Mitch Evans, who was the first driver to try a 200kW qualifying simulation lap, rounded out the top 10.

While the Jaguar driver set the quickest sector one, a scrappy second and third sector saw him claim an initial third position. This eventually became 10th by the time the session ended.

Receiving grid penalties for Saturday’s race are both Venturi drivers Maro Engel and Sarrazin.

The pair will drop 10 places on the grid for gearbox changes after the team had already played their technical jokers earlier in the season.

Engel suffered misfortune with another stoppage in one of his Venturi VM200-FE-02. The German was left temporarily stranded on the circuit, causing a brief Full Course Yellow.

Many cars endured spins during the session including Felix Rosenqvist (Mahindra), Frijns (Andretti) and Nelson Piquet (NextEV).

FP1 results

	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Sebastien Buemi	Renault e.dams	29	1'02.222
2	Loic Duval	Dragon Racing	27	1'02.727	0.505
3	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	22	1'02.923	0.701
4	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	29	1'03.224	1.002
5	Robin Frijns	Andretti Autosport	29	1'03.319	1.097
6	Sam Bird	DS Virgin Racing	26	1'03.405	1.183
7	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	29	1'03.421	1.199
8	Lucas Di Grassi	Audi Sport Team Abt	32	1'03.462	1.240
9	Daniel Abt	Audi Sport Team Abt	32	1'03.578	1.356
10	Mitch Evans	Jaguar Racing	28	1'03.621	1.399
11	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra Racing	29	1'03.706	1.484
12	Nicolas Prost	Renault e.dams	27	1'03.761	1.539
13	Jose Maria Lopez	DS Virgin Racing	27	1'03.807	1.585
14	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	29	1'03.841	1.619
15	Nelson Piquet Jr	NextEV NIO	33	1'03.934	1.712
16	Oliver Turvey	NextEV NIO	33	1'04.052	1.830
17	António Felix da Costa	Andretti Autosport	32	1'04.117	1.895
18	Maro Engel	Venturi	27	1'04.330	2.108
19	Esteban Gutierrez	Techeetah	34	1'04.335	2.113
20	Adam Carroll	Jaguar Racing	26	1'04.700	2.478