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Sebastien Buemi: Renault has found Rome Formula E energy problem

Sebastien Buemi says his Renault e.dams team has found the cause of the energy problem that hampered his Formula E race in Rome ahead of this weekend's event in Paris

Buemi worked his way into the fight for the podium in Rome as he followed the same pitstop strategy as eventual race winner Sam Bird, before falling to sixth by the finish due to what he hoped were "abnormal" energy problems in his second car.

The 2015/16 FE champion explained that this has now been traced to an energy recovery problem with that machine.

"We found it," he told Autosport. "Because we don't have telemetry the team cannot react live - we have to wait and see the data.

"Somehow as a team we did a mistake and we did not recover the energy we were supposed to recover, so I ended up having to lift massively and I ended up being not competitive.

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"Hopefully, we're going to have a clean one [in Paris] with no mistakes - doing what we know.

"It's been a tough season so far, so we want to make it a good one from now on.

"We are confident it will not happen again, but in this category you never know - something else might happen so we do our best - but we've worked very hard since Rome."

Buemi has finished both of FE's previous events in Paris on the podium and won the race last season.

The Swiss driver is hoping to leave a lasting memory for Renault this weekend, as the manufacturer will swap its FE entry with its alliance partner Nissan after this season.

"I'm looking forward to it because I've done well [there] in the past and also after Rome I want to bounce back," he said.

"It's also the home race for Renault and it's going to be the last one because Renault is pulling the plug on Formula E.

"I just want to do well - it's going to be the last home race for Renault in Formula E, so let's hope we can make it a good one."

The short and tight track layout is a notable feature of the Circuit des Invalides, and Buemi highlighted the significance of needing to qualify towards the front of the grid when it came to securing a good result in Paris.

"It's a very technical track - one of the most technical ones - quite bumpy as well," he said. "As we saw last year it's easy to do mistakes.

"It's important to just do good laps - you don't need to go and get the last thousandths of a second, just make sure you don't do any big mistakes as in general it ends up being good enough.

"The starting position is important because it's hard to pass in Paris - if you can start at the front it's going to be important."

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