Daniel Abt and Sebastien Buemi lead Long Beach Formula E practice

Abt's practice two best of 56.778 seconds eclipsed his own pole time from last year's race by two tenths of a second.

The Abt Audi Sport driver jumped Buemi and Lucas di Grassi to go top of the times with less than 10 minutes of the second practice session remaining.

He outpaced Renault e.dams' Buemi by 0.174s, with the second Abt Schaeffler FE01 of di Grassi a further tenth slower in third.

It was an encouraging session for the German Abt team at the end of a week in which it accepted responsibility for the weight miscalculation that led to di Grassi being disqualified in Mexico last time out.

Buemi had topped opening practice and seemed on course to replicate the feat before Abt's late improvement.

The Swiss driver, who leads di Grassi by 22 points in the title race, heads into the pole shootout optimistic of ending a run of three consecutive mistakes in qualifying, after his team discovered an issue with the brake system following the Mexican race.

Behind the two Abt cars and the points leader, underdog stars Antonio Felix da Costa and Robin Frijns continued to shine for Team Aguri and Andretti Autosport respectively.

Both drivers were within half a second of Abt's benchmark in fourth and fifth respectively.

Sam Bird again extracted more from the heavy DS Virgin Racing car than team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne to go sixth in practice two, the Briton backing up his second-fastest time in the earlier session.

The second Renault e.dams machine was only seventh in the hands of Nicolas Prost, with Bruno Senna, Stephane Sarrazin and Mexico victor Jerome d'Ambrosio completing the top 10.

D'Ambrosio's Dragon Racing team is in a constant fight with Abt to be Renault's nearest challenger this season and struggled to make an impact on Saturday morning.

It failed to break into the top 10 in first practice and while d'Ambrosio got to 0.7s of Abt by the end of the second session team-mate Loic Duval was only 12th and a second off the pace.

PRACTICE ONE TIMES

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Sebastien Buemi	e.dams	Renault	57.383s	-	27
2	Sam Bird	Virgin	Virgin	57.815s	0.432s	23
3	Simona de Silvestro	Andretti	Spark	58.033s	0.650s	23
4	Robin Frijns	Andretti	Spark	58.039s	0.656s	22
5	Salvador Duran	Aguri	Spark	58.119s	0.736s	29
6	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	Venturi	58.373s	0.990s	33
7	Antonio Felix da Costa	Aguri	Spark	58.775s	1.392s	31
8	Lucas di Grassi	Abt	ABT Schaeffler	58.780s	1.397s	32
9	Nicolas Prost	e.dams	Renault	58.783s	1.400s	26
10	Daniel Abt	Abt	ABT Schaeffler	58.790s	1.407s	27
11	Jean-Eric Vergne	Virgin	Virgin	58.852s	1.469s	24
12	Loic Duval	Dragon	Venturi	59.039s	1.656s	28
13	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon	Venturi	59.048s	1.665s	29
14	Oliver Turvey	China	NEXTEV TCR	59.120s	1.737s	37
15	Mike Conway	Venturi	Venturi	59.276s	1.893s	25
16	Nelson Piquet Jr.	China	NEXTEV TCR	59.441s	2.058s	28
17	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	Mahindra	59.505s	2.122s	20
18	Bruno Senna	Mahindra	Mahindra	59.556s	2.173s	27

PRACTICE TWO TIMES

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Daniel Abt	Abt	ABT Schaeffler	56.778s	-	18
2	Sebastien Buemi	e.dams	Renault	56.952s	0.174s	22
3	Lucas di Grassi	Abt	ABT Schaeffler	57.044s	0.266s	18
4	Antonio Felix da Costa	Aguri	Spark	57.155s	0.377s	18
5	Robin Frijns	Andretti	Spark	57.161s	0.383s	19
6	Sam Bird	Virgin	Virgin	57.212s	0.434s	19
7	Nicolas Prost	e.dams	Renault	57.259s	0.481s	23
8	Bruno Senna	Mahindra	Mahindra	57.377s	0.599s	22
9	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	Venturi	57.408s	0.630s	19
10	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon	Venturi	57.457s	0.679s	19
11	Simona de Silvestro	Andretti	Spark	57.682s	0.904s	22
12	Loic Duval	Dragon	Venturi	57.757s	0.979s	21
13	Nelson Piquet Jr.	China	NEXTEV TCR	57.802s	1.024s	20
14	Mike Conway	Venturi	Venturi	57.862s	1.084s	16
15	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	Mahindra	57.899s	1.121s	14
16	Jean-Eric Vergne	Virgin	Virgin	58.099s	1.321s	16
17	Oliver Turvey	China	NEXTEV TCR	58.297s	1.519s	20
18	Salvador Duran	Aguri	Spark	59.214s	2.436s	18