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Buemi takes New York pole as Vergne qualifies 10th

Nissan e.dams’ Sebastien Buemi claimed pole in New York City by four tenths of a second for the New York City E-Prix as championship leader Jean-Eric Vergne qualified 10th.

Buemi was last to run in the super pole shootout and set a time of 1m10.188s to claim pole position and the three bonus points to go with it.

Polesitter Buemi is the highest placed driver on the grid who is still in championship contention.

Mahindra Racing’s Pascal Wehrlein was second with a 1m10.600s as he held off Jaguar Racing’s Alex Lynn by a tenth of a second.

Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler’s Daniel Abt qualified in fourth place – and not claiming pole position meant he dropped out of contention for the title.

With 55 points available, Abt is now 55 points behind and DS Techeetah’s Vergne would lead the pair on countback should it come to number of wins. Vergne has three wins to Abt’s none with only two available.

BMW i Andretti Motorsport’s Alexander Sims was fifth with Envision Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird qualifying in sixth place.

Dragon Racing’s Jose Maria Lopez qualified in seventh despite clipping the wall on his lap and it had looked like the Argentine had done enough to make super pole before Lynn usurped him late on.

BMW’s Antonio Felix da Costa was the highest placed group one driver in eighth place as he held off Robin Frijns by 0.009s.

Da Costa and Frijns are both in contention for the title and start ahead of DS Techeetah’s Jean-Eric Vergne and Audi’s Lucas di Grassi, who are the two lead drivers in the championship.

Vergne and di Grassi were out in the first group of qualifying on a dusty track in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and could only qualify 10th and 14th respectively in New York.

Maximilian Guenther, Tom Dillmann and Mitch Evans separated the two protagonists with 11th, 12th and 13th respectively.

Gary Paffett was the lead HWA Racelab driver with 15th place as he beat championship contender Andre Lotterer.

Lotterer is the lowest placed championship contender as he found traffic on his qualifying lap. The DS Techeetah pair both went on a 250kW lap without a 200kW warm-up lap.

As they were last to leave the pit lane, they had traffic which included di Grassi on their lap.

Venturi’s Edoardo Mortara was 17th with NIO’s Oliver Turvey, HWA’s Stoffel Vandoorne and Nissan’s Oliver Rowland just behind.

The top 20 were separated by eight tenths of a second in group qualifying.

Felipe Massa qualified 21st with Mahindra’s Jerome d’Ambrosio last after spinning on his flying lap.

The penultimate race of the season starts at 4pm local time.

Jack Amey

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