2017 Mexico City ePrix
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 2017 Mexico City ePrix | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Race 4 of 12 of the 2016–17 Formula E Championship
| |||||
 2017 Formula E layout of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez | |||||
| Race details[1][2] | |||||
| Date | 1 April 2017 | ||||
| Official name | 2017 FIA Formula E Julius Baer Mexico City ePrix[3] | ||||
| Location | Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Mexico City, Mexico | ||||
| Course | Permanent racing facility | ||||
| Course length | 2.093 km (1.301 miles) | ||||
| Distance | 45 laps, 94.199 km (58.533 miles) | ||||
| Weather | Sunny: Air 26.9 to 27.5 °C (80.4 to 81.5 °F), Track 22.8 to 23.3 °C (73.0 to 73.9 °F) | ||||
| Attendance | 36,000 | ||||
| Pole position | |||||
| Driver | NextEV NIO | ||||
| Time | 1:02.867 | ||||
| Fastest lap | |||||
| Driver |
 Sébastien Buemi | e.dams-Renault | |||
| Time | 1:03.102 on lap 40 | ||||
| Podium | |||||
| First | Audi Sport ABT | ||||
| Second | Techeetah-Renault | ||||
| Third | Virgin-Citroën | ||||
|
Lap leaders | |||||
The 2017 Mexico City ePrix (officially the 2017 FIA Formula E Julius Baer Mexico City ePrix) was a Formula E electric car race held on 1 April 2017 before a crowd of 36,000 people at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City, Mexico. It was the fourth round of the 2016–17 Formula E Championship and the second Mexico City ePrix. The 45-lap race was won by Audi Sport ABT driver Lucas di Grassi after starting from 15th position. Techeetah's Jean-Éric Vergne finished second and Virgin driver Sam Bird was third.
Oliver Turvey took pole position after Daniel Abt was penalised for a tyre pressure infringement and held off pressure from José María López to lead the field until he retired from the race with power issues, handing the lead to López. Di Grassi and Jérôme d'Ambrosio made early pit stops to switch into their second cars and di Grassi took the lead on lap 26 when the rest of the field made their stops. D'Ambrosio held off Vergne for second place until lap 43 as di Grassi held the lead for the rest of the race by conserving electrical energy to win. There were three lead changes among four different drivers and three safety car periods during the course of the race.
It was di Grassi's first victory of the season and the fifth of his career. The result reduced Sébastien Buemi's lead over di Grassi in the Drivers' Championship from 29 to five after finishing 14th, but earned one point for setting the race's fastest lap. Nico Prost and Vergne remained in third and fourth places while Bird passed Felix Rosenqvist for fifth. Audi Sport ABT drew to within 31 points of e.Dams-Renault in the Teams' Championship, while Virgin moved from sixth to third with eight races left in the season.
The Mexico City ePrix was confirmed as part of Formula E's 2016–17 schedule in September 2016 by the FIA World Motor Sport Council.[4] It was the fourth of twelve scheduled single-seater electric car races of the 2016–17 Championship, the second Mexico City ePrix, and was held on 1 April 2017 at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.[5] The ePrix was the only race of the season held on a permanent race track consisting of a mixture between the Grand Prix and oval layouts,[6][7] and is 2.093 km (1.301 mi) long with 17 corners running in a clockwise direction.[8] The circuit was changed after the 2016 race with the first corner changed to a right-hand turn and the final chicane was modified to prevent drivers from short-cutting the corner in order to gain an advantage.[9]
Before the race, e.Dams-Renault driver Sébastien Buemi led the Drivers' Championship with 75 points, ahead of Lucas di Grassi in second and third-placed Nico Prost. Jean-Éric Vergne was fourth on 22 points and Felix Rosenqvist was fifth with 20 points.[10] e.Dams-Renault led the Teams' Championship with 111 points; Audi Sport ABT were in second place on 60 points, and Mahindra in third with 37 points. NextEV stood in fourth on 25 points and were three points ahead of Techeetah in fifth.[10]
After losing the victory in the 2016 race because of an underweight car, Audi Sport ABT team principal Hans-Jurgen Abt said his team's objective was to get onto the podium. He acknowledged that winning would not be easy because of the competitiveness in the field.[11] After retiring from the preceding Buenos Aires ePrix, Sam Bird said he would go into the Mexico City race with a positive attitude and felt there was a possibility of getting onto the podium if his team did well in qualifying.[12] Mitch Evans reiterated that despite Jaguar not scoring points in the season's opening three races, the Buenos Aires race showed that he was becoming more confident and wanted to carry over his momentum from the four-month break.[13]
A total of ten teams each entered two drivers for a total of 20 competitors.[8] There was one pre-race driver change. Having been in one of the Techeetah cars since the opening round of the season in Hong Kong, Ma Qinghua was replaced by the former Haas driver Esteban Gutiérrez.[14] Gutiérrez announced he was entering the series in January 2017 and explored seats with three teams before signing a contract with Techeetah.[15] The change was prompted because of Ma's poor performance in the seven races he competed in Formula E,[15] but remained with Techeetah as their third driver.[14] Buemi, Stéphane Sarrazin (Venturi) and José María López (Virgin) missed the shakedown session because they attended the launch of the 2017 Toyota TS050 Hybrid at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza. The latter two were deputised by defending Formula V8 3.5 Series champion Tom Dillmann and former GP2 Series driver Alex Lynn.[16]
Practice
Two practice sessions—both on Saturday morning—were held before the Saturday late afternoon race. The first session ran for 45 minutes; the second for 30 minutes.[17] The 30-minute shakedown session took place on Friday afternoon and saw Bird record the fastest lap of 1 minute, 8.737 seconds. Evans and Oliver Turvey were second and third.[18] Vergne and his teammate Gutiérrez incurred three-place suspended grid penalties for exceeding their electrical power allowance under full course yellow conditions in shakedown.[19] Both practice sessions took place in warm and dry weather.[1] After arriving in Mexico City early on Saturday morning, Buemi, despite being delayed by Gutiérrez, used 200 kW (270 hp) of power to go quickest in the first session with a lap of 1 minute, 2.222 seconds, half a second faster than Loïc Duval in second. Duval's Dragon teammate Jérôme d'Ambrosio, Vergne, Robin Frijns, Bird, Sarrazin, di Grassi, Daniel Abt and Evans rounded out the session's top ten drivers.[19] The first practice session was held on a dusty track,[20] causing Felix Rosenqvist, Frijns, López and Nelson Piquet Jr. to spin and Maro Engel temporarily stopped his car on track with a battery management system fault, necessitating a brief full course yellow flag.[19][21] Frijns was investigated for performing a dangerous manoeuvre but no action was taken.[20]
In the second practice session, Buemi was the fastest driver with a lap time of 1 minute, 2.164 seconds; Di Grassi and Vergne were one-tenth of a second behind in second and third. Nick Heidfeld, Abt, Piquet, Engel, António Félix da Costa, Turvey and Duval occupied positions four to ten.[22] During the session, where teams assessed their car's thermal management in preparation for the race,[23] Bird and Piquet locked their tyres and went onto the turn one run-off area,[22][24] while Abt stopped on the start/finish straight but was able to restart his car. Duval and Frijns spun within moments of each other. López lost control of his car at the final chicane,[22] and later heavily damaged his vehicle's front-right corner in the final minutes by steering too early for turn 14 and collided with a barrier.[24] The fastest 13 drivers were covered by under one second, indicating a highly-fought midfield battle.[23]
Qualifying
Saturday afternoon's qualifying session ran for 60 minutes and was divided into four groups of five cars. Each group was determined by a lottery system and was permitted six minutes of on-track activity. All drivers were limited to two timed laps with one at maximum power. The fastest five overall competitors in the four groups participated in a "Super Pole" session with one driver on the track at any time going out in reverse order from fifth to first. Each of the five drivers was limited to one timed lap and the starting order was determined by the competitor's fastest times (Super Pole from first to fifth, and group qualifying from sixth to twentieth) The driver and team who recorded the fastest time were awarded three points towards their respective championships.[17] The session was held in dry and warm weather.[1] Drivers complained of a lack of grip early in qualifying but lap times lowered when cars cleaned the circuit by driving on it.[25][26]
In the first group, Heidfeld led the session, almost one-tenth of a second faster than Bird in second, who in turn, was a further three-tenths of a second in front of Buemi in third who went wide at the first corner on his first timed lap despite being in clean air.[25][26] Evans and di Grassi (who made a mistake in turn 17) were the group's slowest two drivers.[25] Turvey was fastest in the second group and set the quickest overall group lap at 1 minute, 2.712 seconds, 0.053 seconds faster than Abt. López, Félix da Costa and Sarrazin were in third to fifth.[26] In the third group, after the previous four drivers went onto the track, Duval was on his maximum power lap when he spun into the first corner and struck the barrier,[26] causing the session to be stopped to allow his car to be removed from the circuit.[25] After the session restarted with three minutes to go,[26] Vergne led the third group,[25] followed by Prost who lost half a second in the second half of the lap. Frijns, Piquet and Duval filled the next three positions.[26]
Engel was the quickest driver in the fourth group, and finished ahead of d'Ambrosio and Rosenqvist who struggled for decent pace.[26] Gutiérrez and Adam Carroll were the fourth group's slowest two drivers. At the end of group qualifying, Abt, Engel, López, Turvey and Vergne qualified for super pole.[25] Vergne was the first to record a super pole lap time; he was unable to achieve a rhythm and was fifth.[25][26] Engel was slower in the track's first third of the lap,[26] but went faster in the second part of the track by two-tenths of a second for third.[25] López was quicker in the first two-thirds of the lap but was unable to go faster in the final third and took fourth.[26] Abt was two-tenths of a second quicker than the previous three drivers in the first third of the lap. Although he lost a small amount of time in the next third, Abt took provisional pole position with a lap of 1 minute, 2.711 seconds.[25][26] Turvey lost time while completing his lap and qualified second. The result would have given Abt his first pole position of the season, the second of his career,[26] and his first since the 2015 Long Beach ePrix,[27] but his car's tyre pressures were found to be below the mandated minimum pressure of 1.60-bar (160 kPa), demoting him to 18th.[28] Further grid penalties were applied when Engel and his teammate Sarrazin dropped ten places because of gearbox changes.[29] The application of Abt's penalty gave Turvey the first pole position of his career.[25] After penalties, the rest of the field lined up as Bird, Félix da Costa, Buemi, Rosenqvist, Gutiérrez, Carroll, Evans, Engel, Prost, Frijns, di Grassi, Piquet, Sarrazin, Abt, d'Ambrosio and Duval.[1]
Qualifying classification
- Notes:
