Buemi on pole for New York Formula E opener
Sebastien Buemi grabbed his second pole position of the Formula E season in qualifying for Saturday's race in New York City as championship leader Jean-Eric Vergne was sent to the back of the grid after receiving a penalty.
Sebastien Buemi grabbed his second pole position of the Formula E season in qualifying for Saturday's race in New York City as championship leader Jean-Eric Vergne was sent to the back of the grid after receiving a penalty.
Vergne had set the fastest time of the initial qualifying heats, only for the stewards to deleted all of his lap times for exceeding the maximum power outage, sending the championship leader to the back of the grid. Techeetah teammate Andre Lotterer - who had provisionally sat second behind his teammate - also had his times wiped, leaving the duo 18th and 19th for the start.
Vergne had been on course to comfortably outqualify title rival Sam Bird, who was second-slowest after the first three groups in qualifying after being one of the earliest runners in the session when the track was at its worst. The DS Virgin driver benefitted from his rivals' demotions, meaning he will start the race 14th on the grid, four places ahead of Vergne. Vergne heads into the race with a 23-point lead over Bird at the top of the standings.
Renault driver Buemi had been set to miss out on a Super Pole berth before being promoted back into the top five following the Techeetahs' demotion, and capitalised in the final session with a rapid lap of 1m13.911s to take pole position.
Buemi took pole by half a second from Jaguar's Mitch Evans, who was left frustrated by a messy final lap, while Nicolas Prost qualified third for his penultimate race for Renault. Jerome d'Ambrosio took P4 for Dragon, while heats pace-setter Daniel Abt lagged behind in P5 for Audi after a mistake on his final lap.
Nelson Piquet Jr. narrowly missed out on a Super Pole berth, qualifying sixth ahead of Dragon's Jose Maria Lopez, with the Venturi duo of Maro Engel and Tom Dillmann slotting into P8 and P9 respectively. Nick Heidfeld rounded out the top 10 for Mahindra.
Outgoing champion Lucas di Grassi will start the final race of the year 11th for Audi ahead of Antonio Felix da Costa of Andretti, with Alex Lynn lining up 13th ahead of DS Virgin teammate Bird.
Luca Filippi was NIO's sole qualifier in New York, taking P15, as teammate Oliver Turvey was taken to hospital due to a hand injury. The team will make a further statement on his participation in the remainder of the race weekend later today.
Felix Rosenqvist's disappointing end to the season continued as he finished 16th ahead of Stephane Sarrazin, the latter crashing on his full power lap, leaving him 17th ahead of Vergne.
