e.dams-Renault‘s Sebastien Buemi made it two time topping days in a row after once again beating Audi Sport ABT‘s Lucas Di Grassi to the top in the fourth and penultimate day of testing at Donington Park.
Buemi’s 1 minute 31.083 seconds was almost two hundredths of a second quicker than Di Grassi, and the Frenchman praised his team for the progress made at Donington Park ahead of the Beijing ePrix.
“Today has been a very good day,” said Buemi. “This morning we concentrated on race pace working on putting in lots of laps and finding the best balance with the temperatures of the tyres and battery. We continued to focus on race pace in the afternoon, as well as qualifying runs. Credit again has to go to the team for giving me such a good car and the confidence to push and we’ll now see how we can improve for the next one.”
Di Grassi, despite losing out to Buemi, was also pleased with the week’s work that saw him top the times on the second day.
“We are making good progress every test and every time I get in the car,” said the Brazilian. “We understand the car a little better but it’s difficult to do a lot of representative work in Donington compared to some of the circuits we will race on throughout the season. The most important thing is to learn about the battery, the motor and tyre pressures but not necessarily fine tuning set-up at this track.”
While the top two tested with their futures clear, third and fourth place saw two potential new additions to the grid in Jerome D’Ambrosio, for China Racing, and Scott Speed, for Andretti Autosport.
Rounding out the top ten was Sam Bird of Virgin Racing; Di Grassi’s teammate, Daniel Abt; Buemi’s teammate, Nicolas Prost; Nick Heidfeld, taking over from Stephane Sarrazin‘s double duty the day before; and completing the top ten was two ex-Formula 1 drivers in TrulliGP‘s Jarno Trulli and Mahindra‘s Bruno Senna.
