Jaguar's Mitch Evans quickest during Formula E practice in New York

Standings leader Jean-Eric Vergne was 13th quickest across the two sessions, while his title rival Sam Bird finished fourth.

Evans set the best time of 1m13.207s with just two minutes of the 30-minute second practice session remaining using his full power 200kW setting.

Di Grassi topped Saturday's earlier FP1 running, a 45-minute session that was heavily disrupted, with a 1m13.566s, which ended up 0.359s slower than Evans' best overall time.

In hot and sunny conditions at the Brooklyn Circuit situated in New York's Red Hook port neighbourhood, the majority of the field set their best times in FP2.

Notable exceptions were di Grassi, who clipped the right rear of one of his cars against the 90-degree right-hander of Turn 2 and had to return to the pits, and Vergne.

Di Grassi had a battery changed between the practice sessions, but was able to get going again in FP2 after a lengthy delay but went on to only set the 10th the fastest time in that running.

Techeetah's Vergne finished fourth in FP1 but lost a significant amount of time on his late 200kW run in the second session as he went off at the final left-hander, just about managing to stay out of the barriers.

Jerome D'Ambrosio completed his 200kW lap in FP2 when the track was quiet and the Dragon Racing driver ended up third fastest in the overall standings, up from P12 in first practice.

Bird finished 0.42s behind Evans overall, but he had a moment late in the second session, spinning around at the flowing Turns 9/10 sequence - part of the longer addition to the circuit that he said ahead of the weekend would not suit his Virgin Racing squad.

Jose Maria Lopez was fifth in the combined practice times, ahead of Renault e.dams driver Sebastian Buemi, who trailed di Grassi in FP1.

Nico Prost set the seventh fastest time overall ahead of Antonio Felix da Costa and Oliver Turvey, who looked set to leap up the order late in FP2.

But the NIO driver lost the rear of his car at the final corner and unlike Vergne he slapped his right-hand side against the barrier before crossing the line.

Daniel Abt rounded out the top 10 for Audi after finishing fifth fastest in FP1.

Any driver heading off line around the Brooklyn track created huge plumes of dust and there were dramatic moments in both sessions.

Nick Heidfeld stopped at Turn 12 during FP1 with several cars caught behind him, which triggered the first red flag of that session.

The second was caused by Lopez breaking his right rear suspension and stopping in the pitlane, which led to a lengthy delay and FP1 being extended by 10 minutes.

Other drivers to have moments included Andre Lotterer - 11th quickest overall - and Nelson Piquet Jr (Jaguar), who ended up 14th.

Former championship leader Felix Rosenqvist was the slowest driver in FP2 and finished 16th overall, just behind Alex Lynn - with the duo the remaining drivers that did not improve during the second session.

FP1 results

FP2 results