Sam Bird tops first day of final pre-season Formula E test
Sam Bird topped the first day of the final pre-season Formula E test at Donington Park, as rain prevented any late improvements
The track was dry for the start of testing at midday, and though there were spots of rain through the lunch break and early stages of the afternoon the teams had a decent window of dry running.
Virgin DS Racing driver Bird made the most of it to set a 1m30.451s with an hour and a half remaining in his DSV-01.
That was 0.3s better than Lucas di Grassi managed in the newly-liveried Abt Audi Sport machine, with those two the only to set competitive times at the 200kW qualifying limit.
Dragon Racing's still-to-be confirmed driver Loic Duval and Venturi's Jacques Villeneuve were more than a second away from Bird's best in third and fourth but were equally well clear of their respective team-mates Jerome d'Ambrosio and Stephane Sarrazin.
The day's heaviest rainfall came shortly after Bird posted his benchmark, which restricted teams to wet-weather runs and system checks.
It was a largely quiet day, though there were two incidents of note.
The first came when Villenueve beached his VM200-FE-01 in the gravel at the Melbourne hairpin in the wet, and the second when d'Ambrosio did the same at the Old Hairpin after the chequered flag had been shown.
Andretti Autosport's confidence that its problems from last week were solved proved misplaced, as Simona de Silvestro and Robin Frijns were consigned to the team's garage for the duration of the day.
There were also no runs for the Trulli team for the fifth day of testing in a row, though its troubled Motomatica JT-01 was fired up in the workshop.
Day one testing times: 1. Sam Bird DS Virgin Racing 1m30.451s 2. Lucas di Grassi Abt Audi Sport 1m30.772s 3. Loic Duval Dragon Racing 1m32.022s 4. Jacques Villeneuve Venturi 1m32.154s 5. Jerome D'Ambrosio Dragon Racing 1m33.419s 6. Stephane Sarrazin Venturi 1m33.569s 7. Sebastien Buemi Renault e.dams 1m33.883s 8. Oliver Turvey Team China Racing 1m34.203s 9. Nick Heidfeld Mahindra Racing 1m34.501s 10. Nathanael Berthon Team Aguri 1m34.739s 11. Nicolas Prost Renault e.dams 1m34.895s 12. Bruno Senna Mahindra Racing 1m35.611s Vitantonio Liuzzi Trulli no time Simona de Silvestro Andretti Autosport no time Robin Frijns Andretti Autosport no time
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments