FIA Formula E Championship Race Report Round Seven Monaco

2015-05-10 08:21:07

FORMULA-E - 7th Round – Monaco

9th May 2015

After criss-crossing Asia and the Americas, Formula-E has finally reached Europe – and what better place to start than the famous streets of Monaco.

Lucas di Grassi was looking to defend his one-point lead over Nelson Piquet Jr in the driver standings. Thus far we had had six different winners from six races. Would there be a seventh in Monaco? Only time would tell.

Earlier in qualifying, just 1.3 seconds split the top 19 drivers. Lucas di Grassi led the field after the first group with Nelson Piquet Jr accusing the championship leader of deliberately holding him up. Despite this little skirmish, he stayed in P1 until the third group went out when Sébastien Buemi took one-fifth of a second off his time.

So the grid at the start of Monaco would look like this:

  • 1.Sébastien Buemi - E-Dams Renault 53.478
  • 2.Lucas di Grassi - Audi Sport ABT + 0.191
  • 3.Jerome d’Ambrosio - Dragon Racing + 0.224
  • 4.Nelson Piquet Jr - Nexttev TCR + 0.234
  • 5.Daniel Abt - Audi Sport ABT + 0.413
  • 6.Nicolas Prost - E-Dams Renault + 0.431
  • 7.Bruno Senna - Mahindra Racing + 0.557
  • 8.Nick Heidfeld - Venturi + 0.651
  • 9.Stéphane Sarrazin - Venturi + 0.655
  • 10.Salvador Duran - Amlin Aguri + 0.697

A few minutes before the race started, Nelson Piquet Jr, Salvador Duran and Jean-Eric Vergne were announced as the recipients of the fan boost system, meaning they would get an extra 30kW of power for five seconds in both of their cars.

It was a really good start for Buemi off the line as the start lights went out. Jean-Eric Vergne lost the front wing of his car as they negotiated the first, tight right-hander. But further on towards turn 2 as they came down JFK Avenue it was carnage.

Abt and Senna suddenly found themselves out of the race after Senna’s car had literally tried to leap over Abt’s after the Audi Sport ABT car had hit the wall. As a result the safety car was deployed. Both Andretti cars were also victims of the ensuing battle whilst Luizzi’s car had lost a rear wing. Loic Duval was also taken out.

So as the Safety Car was looking to come in on lap 3, the top five positions were Buemi, Di Grassi, D’Ambrosio, Piquet Jr and Sarrazin. Out of the 20 starters, by this time and the restart it had been reduced to 16.

On Lap 6, having used his fan boost and failed, Nelson Piquet Jr finally jumped up the inside of D’Ambrosio to take third in what was a decisive move.

Trulli and Heidfeld were put under investigation after their collision on lap 17 at the harbour hairpin but so far, after a dramatic start to the race, things had appeared to calm down – a familiar pattern in the first half of Formula E races.

On lap 20, Bird leap-frogged Prost into P6 in a text-book move.

With 10% of his energy remaining, Di Grassi made the surprise decision to pit first, perhaps to try and get some clean air, quickly followed by Sarrazin and Prost. The avalanche of pit stops had begun. Meanwhile Loic du Val was staying out to try and record the fastest laps in the hope of gaining two points.

Di Grassi’s early stop seemed inspired since he came out ahead of Piquet Jr to take P2 but still behind Buemi who held on to P1. So after the mid-car shake-up, the top 10 look was completed by Bird who had jumped from starting 10th on the grid, d’Ambrosio, Prost, Sarrazin (who had dropped places during the swap), da Costa, Pic and Speed.

With six laps remaining, the battle for P2 was getting hotter by the corner with Piquet Jr battling to take the second step on the podium from di Grassi. Just one point remained between them in the championship so this was going to be a gloves-off fight, especially since they had fallen out earlier in the day during qualifying. With five laps to go it was nose-to-tail between the two championship leaders.

But a near-collision just four laps from the end saw Piquet Jr drop back towards the clutches of Sam Bird.

And there they stayed and as we neared the end of the 7th race, it was almost certain that Buemi would be the first Formula E driver to win for the second time in the season. Not only this, but he was the first driver to start from pole and pass the finishing line first. A wonderful performance from the Swiss driver. Below is the table showing how the top 10 finished:

FIA Formula E Championship – Monaco ePrix (Rd 7) – Race results:

  1. Sébastien Buemi e.dams-Renault 48:05.225
  2. Lucas di Grassi Audi Sport ABT + 2.154s
  3. Nelson Piquet Jr NEXTEV TCR + 4.634s
  4. Sam Bird Virgin Racing + 4.801s
  5. Jerome D’Ambrosio Dragon Racing + 5.881s
  6. Nicolas Prost e.dams-Renault +11.032s
  7. Stéphane Sarrazin Venturi +26.472s
  8. Charles Pic NEXTEV TCR +49.538s
  9. Antonio Felix da Costa Amlin Aguri +52.658s
  10. Nick Heidfeld Venturi +52.936s

Di Grassi now has a four-point lead at the top of the championship league table. After seven races, Lucas di Grassi still leads the drivers’ classification on 93 points, four more than Nelson Piquet Jr. But Buemi’s win puts him back in the hunt for the title, the Swiss driver being third on 83 points, six more than team-mate Prost. After seven races, the driver’s standings looks like this:

Driver Standings

Lucas di Grassi - 93

Nelson Piquet Jr - 89

Sébastien Buemi - 83

Nicolas Prost - 77

Sam Bird - 64

Jerome D’Ambrosio - 52

Antonio Felix da Costa - 45

Jean-Eric Vergne - 34

Jaime Alguersuari - 30

Bruno Senna - 28

In the teams’ classification, e.dams-Renault has made a significant step forward, the French team now has a 45 point lead over Audi Sport ABT (160 to 115) while Virgin Racing has closed up even further to NEXTEV TCR (94 to 93.) Among the results, worthy of note is the fact the Venturi team managed to get both its drivers into the points at this its home race with Sarrazin seventh and Heidfeld 10th. The full team standings is provided in the table below:

Team Standings

e.dams-Renault - 160

Audi Sport ABT - 115

Virgin Racing - 94

NEXTEV TCR - 93

Andretti - 82

Dragon Racing - 76

Amlin Aguri - 48

Mahindra Racing - 46

Venturi - 16

Trulli - 12

The historic venue of Monaco kicked off the European part of the Formula E season and now there are new settings to explore. The next round, the DHL Berlin ePrix, takes place in a fortnight, on May 23 at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.

We will be there giving you the full coverage – so keep any eye out for our full race report.