Buemi takes dominant NYC pole; Vergne and Bird both outside top ten

Sebastien Buemi secured Pole Position for the New York City E-Prix in dominant fashion for Renault e.dams – amid drama for the championship contenders.

Buemi was over half a second clear of the Jaguar of Mitch Evans and his teammate, Nico Prost in Super Pole, with both drivers also running clean laps.

Jerome d’Ambrosio was fourth fastest for Dragon after a big slide early on and Daniel Abt rounded out the top 5 for Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler after locking up early on in his lap.

It was a dramatic session for championship contenders Jean-Eric Vergne and Sam Bird; Bird was only able to qualify fourteenth but it was even worse for Vergne.

The Frenchman and teammate Andre Lotterer had all of their laps deleted after overusing energy and thus went from first and second positions down to eighteenth and nineteenth.

Mark Preston said in an interview on the international TV feed that the team had updated some of their code for reliability reasons but it went wrong and pushed them over the 200kw allowed for qualifying.

Nelson Piquet was sixth in the second of the Jaguars ahead of Jose Maria Lopez in the second of the Dragon Racing entries.

Maro Engel and Tom Dillmann both went well for Venturi and qualified eighth and ninth respectively with Nick Heidfeld rounding out the top 10 in the first of the Mahindra’s.

Lucas di Grassi was eleventh fastest in the second of the Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler entries despite going out in the first qualifying group.

MS&AD Andretti’s Antonio Felix da Costa was twelfth fastest with both the DS Virgin entries of Alex Lynn and Sam Bird in thirteenth and fourteenth respectively.

Luca Filippi was fifteenth fastest for NIO with Felix Rosenqvist struggling for pace in sixteenth and Stephane Sarrazin seventeenth on the grid after an accident on his 200kw lap from which he was able to drive away from.

In last place after the two Techeetah machines is Oliver Turvey, who won’t be taking the start of the race following an accident in free practice two this morning.

The injury led to a trip to Brooklyn Hospital with a suspected fractured bone in his left hand.

The race will take place at 15:34 local time this afternoon.

Super Pole

Group Classification