Sarrazin tops first practice at Battersea Park

The 45-minute session was red-flagged with around 18 minutes remaining when Jerome D’Ambrosio broke his suspension on one of the bumps around the tight and narrow Battersea Park circuit.

Just five minutes remained when proceedings got back under way, with championship leader Nelson Piquet Jr having set the quickest time of the session, 1m29.514s, up until that point.

The Brazilian would nonetheless find himself shuffled down to sixth place amid a late flurry of improvements, with bitter rival Lucas di Grassi the first to knock Piquet off the top spot with a 1m29.006s.

That was followed up by a 1m27.125s for Sam Bird, and the by a 1m26.450s for Venturi driver Sarrazin, who ended the session with a buffer of 0.675s over the Brit at the top of the leaderboard.

Di Grassi’s time was good enough for third, ahead of another late improver in the form of Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Abt in the second of the Audi Sport Abt machines.

Behind Piquet, D’Ambrosio’s remained seventh despite his earlier problems, with the top 10 being rounded out by Sebastien Buemi, Karun Chandhok and Nicolas Prost.

Elsewhere, Salvador Duran, 16th quickest for the embattled Amlin Aguri squad, caused a yellow flag when he ran into the barriers just prior to the red flags, while a loose bollard in the closing stages also briefly brought out the yellows.

Formula E debutant Fabio Leimer also hit the wall at the final turn, necessitating a change of front-right wishbone by his Virgin team.

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