Barring any post-race disqualifications such as Lucas di Grassi received after winning the Berlin ePrix, Nelson Piquet Jr. will head to the season-ending London ePrix double-header with a healthy points lead after dominating the Moscow ePrix on Saturday.
The Brazilian led the points over Sebastien Buemi and Lucas di Grassi heading into the race, all three of which received FanBoost for the event.
Jean-Eric Vergne started on pole position with the three championship rivals lined up right behind him. However, the Frenchman spun his tires off the start line and Piquet led into the first turn, burning up energy as he pulled a gap ahead of the field prior to the first round of stops.
The pit stops cycled through without any major incidents. However, the e.dams-Renault team, with points contender Sebastien Buemi running in fourth place and teammate Nico Prost battling in the top 10, lost a lot of time in the pits in comparison to the rest of the field.
The reason? Miscommunication – the team believed that the pit stop delta, which it can’t exceed due to safety reasons (the cars have to be stopped for a mandatory period of time in order to assure that the driver’s belts are safely fastened) – was 68 seconds. In reality, it was 58 seconds, which cost both Buemi and Prost 10 seconds in the pits.
On track, a chicane towards the end of the lap became a hot point of contention as Jarno Trulli cut the turn several times while fending off challenges from behind, first by Antonio Felix da Costa and then by Justin Wilson. After contact between Loic Duval and Jarno Trulli, Wilson finally was able to make his way on by and score points for the Andretti Formula E team in his first FIA Formula E series start.
Sebastien Buemi puts his left hand up, urging Jean-Eric Vergne to go back by after Buemi passed Vergne by short-cutting the chicane.
Di Grassi was catching Piquet for the win at the end of the race but fell a couple of seconds short, while Sebastien Buemi came home in third place after shortcutting the chicane that Trulli had made famous to pass Jean-Eric Vergne on the final lap. Heidfeld then followed Buemi and relegated Vergne to a fifth-place finish at the line.
After the race, Sebastien Buemi was penalized for an unsafe pit release, dropping him from fourth to ninth in the race results and moving Lucas di Grassi up to second in the points.
Full race results:
