Podium for Mahindra Racing in FIA Formula E Championship in Monaco

Sebastien Buemi staved off enormous pressure from Lucas di Grassi to claim his fourth FIA Formula E Championship win of the season in Monaco. He now extends his points lead to 15. While di Grassi had to be content with 2^nd, third to come in was Mahindra Racing driver Nick Heidfeld who had a relatively lonely run to third place. It was his first podium finish since the season-opener in Hong Kong back in October.

Heidfeld said, “It’s good to be back on the podium especially as we have been unlucky in the past two races. I tried to go through the start in my head and I knew there might be a train on one side and this could be a chance to overtake a lot of cars and obviously, we know from two years ago how it can pan out in Turn 2 with cars flying over each other, so it was very important to get clear to get back into the line and it worked very well and I managed to take three cars there. We’d discussed a lot about strategy and I said we just follow Lucas and that’s what we did and it was a good strategy!”

Nick’s teammate, Felix Rosenqvist came in 6^th. Overall, it was a good race for Mahindra Racing team.

From his first Julius Baer pole position of the season, Buemi made a perfect start and soon established a comfortable lead over his title rival, who in turn was easing away from Nelson Piquet Jr. in third.

The NextEV NIO driver had no such luxury, as the TECHEETAH of Jean-Eric Vergne was swarming all over him. The Frenchman was clearly anxious to make a move and stop the front two from getting away, and in his desperation, he tried an ambitious move around the outside of the Turn 3 hairpin.

The cars were completely side-by-side and as they banged wheels Vergne was sent crashing into the Tech-Pro barriers. Remarkably Piquet survived having only lost third place to the Mahindra of Nick Heidfeld, but Vergne’s car was heavily damaged and the Qualcomm Safety Car was deployed as it was recovered.

The advances in Formula E technology mean that not only are the cars faster this year than they were in season one when the first Monaco ePrix was held, the races are now significantly longer. Indeed, the race in Monaco was a full four laps longer than the 47 it was run over first time around.

 There’s now just a single week until the FIA Formula E Championship returns with the Qatar Airways Paris ePrix on May 20.