Piquet Jr. leads the way on strong FP1 for Jaguar Racing

On Formula E’s first ever race in the Eternal City, both Jaguar Racing cars showed a  demolishing pace, with Piquet Jr. positioning himself on top of the standings for most of the session.

Nelson Piquet set the early pace in Rome for Panasonic Jaguar Racing with a 1:36.134 ahead of DS Virgin’s Sam Bird and team-mate Mitch Evans.

Jean-Eric Vergne set the fourth fastest time for Techeetah with Season 2 champion Sebastien Buemi fifth and Vergne’s teammate, Andre Lotterer, in sixth.

Felix Rosenqvist was seventh fastest for Mahindra with Dragon’s Jerome D’Ambrosio in eighth ahead of the defending champion, Lucas di Grassi.

Alex Lynn rounded out the top 10 despite bringing the session to an early end after he locked up and hit the wall at Turn 1.

Jose Maria Lopez was eleventh in the second of the Dragon cars despite hitting the wall at the exit of turn 5 hard enough to break the rear suspension.

Oliver Turvey was twelfth in the fastest of the NIO’s with Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler’s Daniel Abt thirteenth and Nico Prost fourteenth in the second of the Renault e.dams entries.

Fifteenth was Nick Heidfeld in the second of the Mahindra’s ahead of the Venturi pairing of Maro Engel and Edoardo Mortara.

Luca Filippi was eighteenth in the second of the NIO’s with the MS&AD Andretti’s of Antonio Felix da Costa and Tom Blomqvist rounding out the field. 

Apart from the incidents involving Lynn and Lopez, it was a clean session with just the odd yellow flag as the drivers were keen to find the limits on the new circuit.