di Grassi wins enthralling Putrajaya ePrix

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Lucas di Grassi has taken his first victory of the season and with it the championship lead following a crazy second half of the Putrajaya ePrix.

The start of the ePrix was delayed slightly as a problem for Stephane Sarrazin meant the Frenchman was forced to concede his second place on the grid and start from the pit lane.

Sebastien Buemi had taken pole position earlier in the day to set up what looked to have been another Renault e.dams walkover and led the field away as further back Jean-Eric Vergne was eliminated following contact with Jacques Villeneuve and Nick Heidfeld, with the latter falling to the rear of the field after a spin.

Up front, Buemi continued to lead from Loic Duval, Antonio Felix da Costa, Nicolas Prost and di Grassi. A brief safety car was deployed as Oliver Turvey suffered a throttle problem, causing the Englishman to tuck his nose into the wall at turn five.

After looking to dominate again, a software problem for Buemi plagued his first car, handing the lead to Loic Duval as Prost pulled into the pits with a temperature problem. The timing of the problems for both e.dams cars left the team with a lot of work to do, as this left them with two laps longer to run in the second car.

As the other front runners ran to the limit with their battery usage, the leading trio of Duval, di Grassi and da Costa all pitted on the same lap, with a prolonged pit stop for race leader Duval demoting him down to a net third as da Costa jumped up into what was effectively the lead, while di Grassi also nipped ahead.

However, a problem for da Costa handed the lead to di Grassi as the Portuguese driver slowed coming out of the first chicane, rebooting the car moments later.

Towards the end of the race, Jerome d’Ambrosio and Robin Frijns had made use of a longer first stint to close the gap to the leaders. However, all hell broke loose as Duval made a mistake up front, clipping the wall and allowing Frijns to pass, only for the Dutchman to smash his rear suspension into the wall leading into the hairpin as an altered line left the Andretti driver on the marbles. By some miracle, Frijns was able to continue the race, albeit with a heavily-crabbing car.

Out of nowhere, Sam Bird had risen into second place through all the carnage after starting the race 14th, while d’Ambrosio had snuck through into third. The race was soon over for the Belgian as on the final lap his Dragon Racing machine clipped the wall before coming to rest facing a barrier, meaning a double retirement for the team following the potential of victory.

As Duval parked his car on the outside of the penultimate corner, double waved yellows were in effect rather than a race-ending safety car or Full Course Yellow, allowing di Grassi to come through and take victory ahead of S1 winner Bird while Frijns completed a superb race by nursing a damaged car to his maiden Formula E podium in only his second race.

Following his forced pit lane start, Sarrazin drove a strong but anonymous race to claim his best result in Formula E with fourth, while Senna kept him company in fifth.

Despite the problems with the car, da Costa was able to salvage some points with a sixth place finish, while Daniel Abt, Nelson Piquet Jr, Heidfeld and Prost rounded out the top ten.

Buemi was able to take some points away from the weekend, as the Swiss driver took the fastest lap of the race as well as pole position.

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Image courtesy of FIA Formula E Media

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