Bird escapes pit lane crash to take Marrakesh Formula E pole

Sam Bird bounced back from a pit lane clash involving his Formula E teammate midway through qualifying to take pole position for the Marrakesh E-Prix at the Circuit International Automobile Moulay El Hassan.

Bird finished the qualifying heats as the fastest driver, but had to complete Super Pole with a damaged car following a bizarre pit lane crash involving three cars at the end of Q3.

As Envision Virgin teammates Bird and Robin Frijns queued up at the entry to the pit lane, NIO racer Tom Dillmann suffered a brake failure that forced him to run into the back of Frijns' car, which in turn ran into Bird ahead.

While Frijns and Dillmann sustained the bulk of the damage, Bird's diffuser also lost a chunk, forcing him to head out without any repairs.

Despite the damage, Bird wrestled his car around the track to set a pole time of 1m17.489s, edging out reigning champion Jean-Eric Vergne of DS Techeetah by just 0.046 seconds.

Championship leader Antonio Felix da Costa finished one-tenth of a second further back in third place, and will be joined on the second row of the grid by Sebastien Buemi of Nissan e.dams.

FIA FORMULA E MARRAKESH E-PRIX - QUALIFYING RESULTS

Da Costa's teammate, Alexander Sims, took fifth place overall after a small mistake on his Super Pole lap, while Mitch Evans paid the price for a lock-up that sent him deep on his final flyer, leaving him down in P6 for Jaguar.

Pascal Wehrlein will make his Formula E debut from seventh place on the grid after narrowly missing out on a place in Super Pole for Mahindra, falling two-hundredths of a second shy of the top six positions.

Frijns finished eighth for Envision Virgin prior to the pit lane clash with Dillmann, while Nelson Piquet Jr. and Jerome d'Ambrosio rounded out the top 10 positions for Jaguar and Mahindra respectively.

After an issue prevented him from completing a qualifying simulation in practice, Audi's Lucas di Grassi took 11th overall in the heats, with teammate Daniel Abt finishing five places further back in P16 as both drivers struggled to match the front-runners.

Oliver Rowland will start 12th for Nissan e.dams ahead of Jose Maria Lopez and Oliver Turvey, while ex-Formula 1 racer Felipe Massa bounced back from a practice issue to finish 15th.

Edoardo Mortara could only finish P17 ahead of Dillmann and Gary Paffett, with Andre Lotterer languishing down in 20th after losing a significant amount of time through the closing stages of his lap, having initially matched Techeetah teammate Vergne for pace.

Maximilian Günther will start on the final row of the grid for Dragon after a slide exiting Turn 6 saw him glance the wall, compromising his full power 250 kW lap.

He will be joined on the final row by Stoffel Vandoorne, whose HWA Racelab car shut down midway through his lap, leaving him at the back of the field.