He may have crashed out of the Punta del Este ePrix, but Venturi GP’s Stephane Sarrazin recovered from his setback to top the times in the first ever in-season Formula E test.
His lap of 1min 14.649secs proved to be one tenth of a second quicker than the second placed driver, and Punta del Este ePrix race winner, Sebastien Buemi of e.dams-Renault.
“It’s been a good day after a disappointing race yesterday,” said Sarrazin. “We had the speed but I made a mistake and could have picked up some good points. Today we worked on some big set-up changes as there’s normally no time and we’ve not wanted to risk it before a race. With the track rubbering in, everything came together. It’s been a very positive day.”
It was certainly positive on both sides of the Venturi garage, as team-mate Nick Heidfeld was fourth with a time of 1min 14.841secs, finishing behind Saturday’s impressive Nelson Piquet Jr of China Racing. A continuation of Andretti’s Jean-Eric Vergne’s form saw him take fifth.
Championship leader and Audi Sport ABT driver Lucas di Grassi finished sixth with e.dams-Renault’s Nicolas Prost a further place back. After both suffering early retirements in the race yesterday, Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird and Amlin Aguri’s Antonio Felix da Costa finished the session in eighth and ninth respectively before Mahindra Racing’s Karun Chandhok rounded off the top ten.
The majority of the field focused on race simulations and battery management throughout the day but after a late flurry of activity in the final minutes the lap times reduced significantly. The teams used the limited testing time available to record a total of 1086 laps, covering a distance of 3040km.
Also of note was a guest at the China Racing team, as Argentinean driver Esteban Guerrieri made a brief appearance late in the afternoon session to complete five laps for China Racing.
FIA Formula E Championship – Punta del Este in-season test session – Results (combined morning and afternoon):
- Stephane Sarrazin, Venturi, 1:14.649s
- Sebastien Buemi, e.dams-Renault, +0.157s
- Nelson Piquet Jr, China Racing, +0.184s
- Nick Heidfeld, Venturi, +0.192s
- Jean-Eric Vergne, Andretti, +0.326s
- Lucas di Grassi, Audi Sport ABT, +0.350s
- Nicolas Prost, e.dams-Renault, +0.407s
- Sam Bird, Virgin Racing, +0.720s
- Antonio Felix da Costa, Amlin Aguri, +0.777s
- Karun Chandhok, Mahindra Racing, +0.829s
- Antonio Garcia, China Racing, +0.913s
- Jerome d’Ambrosio, Dragon Racing, +0.922s
- Jaime Alguersuari, Virgin Racing, +1.025s
- Bruno Senna, Mahindra Racing, +1.051s
- Jarno Trulli, Trulli, +1.654s
- Oriol Servia, Dragon Racing, +1.743s
- Daniel Abt, Audi Sport ABT, +2.935s
- Michela Cerruti, Trulli, +2.987s
- Matthew Brabham, Andretti, +4.123s
- Salvador Duran, Amlin Aguri, +4.816s
- Esteban Guerrieri, China Racing, +5.913s
