Vergne leads the way in shortened second practice

Piquet completed his time despite a sizeable brush with the wall at the final corner. The Brazilian radioed through to his NEXTEV TCR team in the dying moments of the session, suggesting he could have gone much quicker if it were not for a few small errors.

e-DAMS drivers Nicolas Prost and Sebastien Buemi both had periods at the head of the timing screens, but ultimately fell back to third and sixth respectively.

Jerome D’Ambrosio, in his repaired Dragon Racing machine, placed fourth. The Belgian’s broken rear pushrod this morning necessitated a modification of the quick turn one corner, which delayed the start of the session and reduced it from 45 minutes in length to half an hour.

Tech-Pro barrier has been positioned on the inside of the left hand corner to change the trajectory for the drivers, thus by-passing the middle of a large bump in the tarmac.

Piquet’s title nemesis Lucas Di Grassi placed fifth in his Audi Abt Spark-Renault, while Buemi in sixth shared an identical time to seventh placed Daniel Abt on 1m26.433s. The Swiss claimed the position by dint of setting his time first.

As per the first practice session, there were incidents aplenty. Amlin Aguri driver Salvador Duran had a trip down the Turn 11 escape road, while team mate Sakon Yamamoto glanced the final corner tech-pro wall and was forced to pit with front wing damage.

Qualifying for the penultimate round of the FIA Formula E Championship will take place at 12.00pm local time, with four groups of five drivers taking to the track in the usual ten minute sessions.

It has also been confirmed that the race will start behind the Safety Car, the unusually narrow track width making a normal start impossible.

Session times: