Sebastien Buemi won the Sunday race in Formula E in Berlin, in a very easy race for the Swiss driver.
Felix Rosenqvist got a great start from Pole Positoin, and led the first lap by more than two seconds.
Behind him there was a dramatic first lap. The two Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport teammates Lucas Di Grassi and Daniel Abt were in a hard battle with each other, and were very close at hitting each other. The German however gave his Brazilian teammate room to get by, so he could fight further forward in the field. All weekend long the two Abt cars had problems with the temperature and couldn’t use the batteries 100 %.
Maro Engel and Loic Duval also hit each other on the first lap, which sent Engel straight to the pit, but then he went for the fastest lap of the race in the other car. He managed to claim that one by a great margin, since everybody else was battling for positions and trying to save power. Duval could continue in the race, but was dead last on the road.
Nick Heidfeld started the race as the last person on the grid, but in only five laps he was already up in 12th, with some amazing overtakings. 13 laps into the race he was in the points…
On lap 17 Sam Bird tried to overtake teammate Jose Maria Lopez – but Lopez didn’t like that and collided with Bird which almost sent him into the wall. That cost Bird several positions and a lot of grey hair for team boss Alex Tai. One lap later Lopez also lost third place to Jean-Eric Vergne, then followed by Lucas Di Grassi and Daniel Abt. The two DS Virgin Racing cars (Lopez and Bird) dropped back in the field like a stone, before they came in and changed cars. Towards the end of the race, the two were back together, but kept their fenders to themselves.
When the pitstops were happening, Mahindra Racing made a big mistake. Just as Felix Rosenqvist exited the garage, Nick Heidfeld entered, and the two were about to collide. They just avoided the collision, and more importantly not running their mechanics down by only a few centimetres. Rosenqvist got a 10-seconds time penalty for unsafe release, which sent him down in second in the results.
Daniel Abt and Jean-Eric Vergne collided into turn 1, but Vergne stayed ahead of Abt, before having to give up the position later. Vergne then had a tough battle with Sam Bird with some heavy defending, but Bird didn’t make it past.
Instead, Bird and Nico Prost were fighting all the way to the finish line and only a few meters after, both ran out of power.
Jerome D’Ambrosio got a drive-through penalty for having been under minimum pitstop time, and that cost him every chance of scoring points in the race.
Lucas Di Grassi finished third in the race despite his ankle injury and scored many good points for his Drivers Championship, and with Daniel Abt finishing fourth, there were plenty for the Teams Championship, too.
Not surprisingly Sebastien Buemi still leads the Drivers Championship, followed by Lucas Di Grassi while Felix Rosenqvist with one first place and one second place this weekend has jumped all the way to third in the Championship.
In the Teams Championship we have Renault e.DAMS still leading ahead of Abt Scheffler Audi Sport and Mahindra Racing.
The next round of the Formula E Championship will be run in New York on July 15th and 16th, in another double header weekend.
