2017 Monaco ePrix

A special feature of Formula E is the "Fan Boost" feature, an additional 100 kW (130 hp) of power to use in the driver's second car. The three drivers who were allowed to use the boost were determined by a fan vote.^[20] For the Monaco race, Buemi, Sarrazin and di Grassi were handed the extra power.^[31] The weather at the start were dry and sunny with an air temperature between 20.0 to 20.8 °C (68.0 to 69.4 °F) and a track temperature from 24.4 to 25.6 °C (75.9 to 78.1 °F);^[1] conditions were expected to remain consistent and a 10 per cent chance of rain was forecast.^[5] The race began at 16:00 Central European Summer Time (UTC+2) before a crowd of 18,000 people.^[32][33] On the grid, Buemi maintained his pole position advantage heading into Sainte Dévote corner. Di Grassi ran close behind Buemi to keep second place.^[34] Heidfeld overtook Rosenqvist and Engel on the outside to move into fifth.^[34][35] Most of the field made a good start but some drivers were caught off guard by the concertina effect at Sainte Dévote with Piquet narrowly avoiding damaging his rear suspension after hitting the barrier, and Abt ran into the back of López, damaging his rear wing and nose cone.^[34] Bird made the equal best getaway in the field, gaining three positions by the end of lap one,^[1] while Sarrazin stalled after leaving the grid, dropping him to the back of the field.^[34]

At the end of the first lap, Buemi led di Grassi, Piquet, Vergne, Heidfeld, Engel, Bird, Rosenqvist, Frijns, López, Abt, Evans, Gutiérrez, Turvey, Carroll, Félix da Costa, Prost, d'Ambrosio, Duval and Sarrazin.^[1] Buemi began to pull away from di Grassi, establishing a lead of one second.^[31] The field settled down for the next six laps with nothing notable occurring.^[36] On lap eight, Bird went over the kerb at Tabac corner, lost control of the rear of his car, and veered into a barrier, damaging his rear suspension.^[34] Bird was forced to make a pit stop, while his teammate López was shown a black flag with an orange circle, requiring him to stop for repairs to his rear wing. Bird's mechanics repaired his vehicle's rear with a spanner and replaced López's rear wing. Both drivers returned to the track to begin battling for the fastest lap. Buemi continued to extend his lead over di Grassi and Piquet while Rosenqvist challenged Engel for sixth. Abt passed Frijns on the outside for eighth and closed up to the Engel and Rosenqvist battle.^[31] Piquet struggled to stay with the leading drivers, and Vergne was close behind him, steering left onto the inside. As both drivers locked their tyres, Piquet clambered with his steering wheel, and both cars made contact; Vergne ended his race in the Novelle Chicane barrier on lap 21.^[31][34][35]

The incident necessitated the deployment of the safety car on the following lap to allow Vergne's car to be extricated from the track and everyone made pit stops for the mandatory change into a second vehicle.^[31][35] Dragon teammates Duval and d'Ambrosio were the first drivers to enter the pit lane,^[34] and after the safety car was withdrawn on lap 26,^[36] racing resumed with Buemi leading di Grassi and Heidfeld.^[34] Buemi again started to pull away from di Grassi and was one second ahead after one lap. D'Ambrosio moved out of the train of cars a few laps later,^[31] stopped and restarted his car, causing him to drop down the field before entering the pit lane.^[34] Duval joined his teammate in the garage with mechanical problems on the 31st lap.^[36] Bird set the race's fastest lap on his 24th lap, completing a circuit in 53.822 seconds, earning him one championship point.^[1] Buemi lifted and coasted as he attempted to level out the electrical energy difference between himself and di Grassi; he used his FanBoost to maintain the advantage he had built up over the latter. Elsewhere, the stewards investigated Gutiérrez for an unsafe pit stop release but elected not to penalise the driver. The primary battle at this point was between Piquet, Engel, Rosenqvist and Abt but all four drivers drove reasonably to allow them one large push at the race's conclusion.^[31]

Di Grassi narrowed the gap to Buemi to half a second with six laps remaining. While pondering about an overtake on Buemi, both were delayed by slower traffic, causing di Grassi to drop back.^[34] Buemi had less available electrical energy than di Grassi which allowed his rival to run close behind him.^[31] Although di Grassi could not use his FanBoost because of battery voltage limitations,^[37] he drew closer to Buemi on the final lap. He forced Buemi to defend his position at the Swimming Pool complex and La Rascasse corner,^[35] but could not find the space to get ahead as run to the start/finish line was not long enough, allowing Buemi to fend him off and take his fourth victory of the season, the tenth of his career, and his second consecutive in Monaco.^[34][36][38] Di Grassi finished 0.320 seconds adrift in second with Heidfeld third.^[31] Heidfeld became the first driver to stand on the Monaco podium in both Formula One and Formula E.^[38] Piquet, Engel, Rosenqvist and Abt all finished close behind each other in positions four to seven.^[31] with Gutiérrez, Prost and Evans in eighth to tenth places.^[1] Félix da Costa was adjudged to have been unsafely released from his garage and incurred a 33-second time penalty that demoted him from ninth to 11th. His teammate Frijns was eighth in the final stages but he lost all electrical energy on the final lap and fell to 12th.^[39] Turvey, Carroll and Sarrazin were the final classified finishers.^[1] Of the other retirees, d'Ambrosio and Duval returned to the track but both retired with the former suffering from a powertrain malfunction and the latter was affected by regenerative braking problems,^[40] and both Virgin cars were not classified in the final results.^[1]

The top three drivers appeared on the podium to collect their trophies and spoke to the media in a later press conference. Buemi said after the safety car was sent out on the track, his team were aware about learning the tactics of making their pit stops early as used by Audi Sport ABT in the season-opening Hong Kong ePrix and the Mexico City race. He stated that felt that it was the right decision but was aware of the difficulty of finishing the event because of him having to conserve electrical energy and that he pulled a gap over di Grassi to maintain the lead.^[41] Di Grassi said during the race's first stint, he did not have enough pace as he was focused on saving electrical energy, but attempted to remain close to Buemi in the second half, and knew he could attack at the end of the race with the correct strategy.^[42] He revealed he did not want to risk colliding with Buemi because of the lack of overtaking opportunities around the tight confines of the Monaco circuit.^[37] Third-place finisher Heidfeld stated it felt good to return to the podium after sub-par results in the season's last two races. He revealed Mahindra heavily discussed their strategy and Heidfeld told them that they follow di Grassi's example which helped the team to finish on the podium.^[41]

Vergne's right hand was injured in the collision with Piquet and required an X-ray scan after complaining he was unable to move it correctly.^[43] He was annoyed with Piquet and briefly visited the NextEV garage to know if the latter had also retired.^[44] Vergne stated that he would ensure that he was fit for the next race of the season in Paris but spoke his feeling the incident "destroyed" his race in Monaco. He believed that the crash prevented him from finishing on the podium and he chose not to speak to Piquet after the event concluded.^[43] Piquet was annoyed at Vergne's attempts at overtaking him, labelling him "impatient" and said he felt he could have been easily passed during the pit stop phase.^[44] He thought Vergne would slow down because the latter was unwilling to be overtaken around the outside,^[43] and that Vergne had placed himself in that situation, deeming it "unnecessary" but spoke of his belief it was a "racing incident":^[44] "It's a shame, I hate that it happened with him and I hate these kinds of situations. I don't like bad feelings and I'm sure he's very upset and thinks I did it on purpose, but I was just going to defend my position."^[43] Vergne represented the incident as less important six days later by saying he did not regret performing his manoeuvre and it was part of motor racing.^[45]

The result extended Buemi's Drivers' Championship advantage over di Grassi to 15 points. Prost remained in third place with 48 points in spite of his poor performance. Vergne maintained fourth position on 40 points despite his retirement while Bird's fastest lap achievement narrowed the gap to the latter to six points.^[11] e.Dams-Renault's result increased their Teams' Championship lead over Audi Sport ABT by a further six points, while Mahindra's finish moved the team from fifth to third. Techeetah overtook Virgin for fourth place with seven races left in the season.^[11]

Drivers who scored championship points are denoted in bold.

Final race classification

Pos.	No.	Driver	Team	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	9	Sébastien Buemi	e.Dams-Renault	51	51:05.488	1	25+31
2	11	Lucas di Grassi	Audi Sport ABT	51	+0.320	2	18
3	23	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	51	+13.678	8	15
4	3	Nelson Piquet Jr.	NextEV NIO	51	+19.074	3	12
5	5	Maro Engel	Venturi	51	+19.518	5	10
6	19	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra	51	+19.599	6	8
7	66	Daniel Abt	Audi Sport ABT	51	+20.430	9	6
8	33	Esteban Gutiérrez	Techeetah-Renault	51	+32.295	13	4
9	8	Nico Prost	e.Dams-Renault	51	+35.667	18	2
10	20	Mitch Evans	Jaguar	51	+38.410	14	1
11	28	António Félix da Costa	Andretti-BMW	51	+1:08.330	163
12	27	Robin Frijns	Andretti-BMW	51	+1:14.053	12
13	88	Oliver Turvey	NextEV NIO	50	+1 Lap	15
14	47	Adam Carroll	Jaguar	50	+1 Lap	17
15	4	Stéphane Sarrazin	Venturi	49	+2 Laps	11
Ret	37	José María López	Virgin-Citroën	43	Suspension	7
Ret	7	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon-Penske	43	Powertrain	19
Ret	6	Loïc Duval	Dragon-Penske	40	Brakes	20
Ret	2	Sam Bird	Virgin-Citroën	36	Suspension	10	12
Ret	25	Jean-Éric Vergne	Techeetah-Renault	20	Collision	4
Source:[1][2]

Notes:

• ^1  — Three points for pole position.^[20]
• ^2  — One point for fastest lap.^[20]
• ^3  — António Félix da Costa had 33 seconds added to his race time for an unsafe pit stop release.^[1]

Drivers' Championship standings[11] +/– Pos Driver Points 1 Sébastien Buemi 104 2 Lucas di Grassi 89 (−15) 3 Nico Prost 48 (−58) 4 Jean-Éric Vergne 40 (−64) 5 Sam Bird 34 (−70)

Teams' Championship standings[11] +/– Pos Team Points 1 e.Dams-Renault 152 2 Audi Sport ABT 115 (−37) 2 3 Mahindra 60 (−88) 1 4 Techeetah-Renault 45 (−107) 2 5 Virgin-Citroën 44 (−108)

• Notes: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.