Victory in second simulation race for Buemi after Massa drama

Sebastien Buemi led the field over the line in the second simulation race of the weekend, which had initially been dominated by the Envision Virgin Racing duo of Sam Bird and Robin Frijns before both pulled out towards the end.

Once again the race got underway from the pit lane, with the DS Techeetah of Antonio Felix da Costa leading out TAG Heuer Porsche’s Andre Lotterer and the Venturi of Felipe Massa.

With the drivers settling into a rhythm, the first of the simulated full course yellows was deployed, lasting for around five minutes before the racing was resumed.

By this point Massa has moved up into the lead, while da Costa pulled into the pit lane after a handful of laps.

The Envision Virgin Racing duo of Bird and Frijns had quietly made their way up the order and challenged Massa for the lead off the restart, Frijns using his attack mode to move ahead while Bird soon followed through into second.

Massa then dropped to fifth as Lotterer and the Nissan e.dams of Oliver Rowland made the most of their attack modes to pass the Brazilian, while by lap 20 the leading duo had built up a gap of 18 seconds.

Lap 22 saw the second full course yellow deployed with the field bunching up, but not long afterwards the Envision Virgin Racing drivers both came into the pits in unison, possibly feeling like they had collected all necessary data.

Just as the leaders pulled into the pit lane, Massa sent an optimistic move up the inside of Rowland heading towards the hairpin, with the latter blocking Massa from returning to the racing line. As a result, the Brazilian was left with nowhere to go other than nose-first into the barriers.

This promoted Rowland’s Nissan e.dams teammate into the lead, while Lotterer came home in second ahead of the Venturi of Edoardo Mortara.

Nico Müller made it three Swiss drivers in the top four in his GEOX Dragon, while Rowland recovered to finish in sixth place behind the Mercedes EQ of Stoffel Vandoorne, the winner of the first simulation race.

Panasonic Jaguar Racing’s Mitch Evans picked his way through to seventh, while birthday boy Pascal Wehrlein, Daniel Abt and Lucas di Grassi rounded out the top ten.