2018 Marrakesh ePrix

The race started at 16:00 Western European Time (UTC+0) on 13 January.^[30] The weather at the start were dry and sunny with the air temperature between 15.05 to 15.8 °C (59.09 to 60.44 °F) and the track temperature 14 °C (57 °F).^[1] A special feature of Formula E is the "Fan Boost" feature, an additional 100 kilowatts (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.^[15] For the Marrakesh race, Buemi, di Grassi and Abt were handed the extra power.^[31] Chassis manufacturer Spark Racing Technology ordered that Rosenqvist's battery be changed half an hour before the race began after Mahindra were alterted to the problem.^[28][32] Similarly, Buemi began the race in his second car as the one he intended to start in had a water pump failure.^[33] Audi undertook a precautionary power inverter change in di Grassi's car.^[31] Turvey and d'Ambrosio started from the pit lane because of technical problems with their respective cars.^[28][29] Buemi made a clean start to retain the lead heading into the first corner as Bird and Rosenqvist maintained second and third. Both ran close behind Buemi as most drivers also made clean starts. Mortara made contact with another car further down the field.^[31]

Vergne moved from 13th to 10th by the end of the first lap, while d'Ambrosio's pit lane start lost him four positions over the same distance. At the end of the first lap, Buemi led Bird, Rosenqvist, López, di Grassi, Lynn, Abt, Piquet, Evans and Vergne.^[1] At the start of lap two,^[29] Abt lined up an overtake on Lynn for sixth place on the start/finish straight and both drivers made contact into the first turn.^[34] Lynn was spun onto the run-off area,^[29][35] and re-joined the track in 19th.^[1] Meanwhile, Piquet had moved to fifth place, while his fellow countryman di Grassi passed López for fourth by forcing this way through. Shortly after López fell to seventh when Piquet and Abt passed him on lap three.^[31][29] Prost was sent into a spin by Lotterer, dropping to 19th.^[36] Turvey was the main beneficiary of the incident, moving to 15th place.^[31] Di Grassi and his Brazilian compatriot Piquet battled for fourth position and it ended when di Grassi slowed with a battery management system failure.^[36][37] He drove off the racing line and Audi instructed him to stop his car. Di Grassi attempted a restart procedure, prompting the waving of localised yellow flags.^[31][35] He returned to his garage to retire.^[36] After the race, di Grassi explained his car started to cut out on the previous lap.^[38]

Meanwhile, his teammate Abt overtook Piquet for fourth but was issued a drive-through penalty for his earlier contact with Lynn. Abt exited the pit lane behind Lynn in 15th place as Turvey moved to tenth.^[31][34] Multiple incidents occurred in the middle of the pack: Filippi and Mortara made contact and Félix da Costa hit Heidfeld who angrily gesticulated to the latter.^[36][39] Vergne was sixth and his teammate Lotterer 13th. The problems affecting the Audi pair of di Grassi and Abt promoted López to fourth.^[31] On lap 15, Lotterer steered off the racing line to retire with a hardware malfunction that locked his brakes.^[28][40] Course officials waved yellow flags at the section of the track Lotterer stopped at for half a minute until the race director decided a full course yellow was necessary.^[40] On the 16th lap, Bird slowed briefly with gearbox issues on the start/finish straight, allowing Rosenqvist to take second.^[28][29][37]

The leaders elected to make their pit stops to change into their second cars during the full course yellow. Buemi kept the lead with his advantage over Rosenqvist increasing to 11⁄2 seconds.^[31] Piquet returned to fourth ahead of López and Vergne moved to fifth.^[29][37] The Venturi pair of Mortara and Engel exited the pit lane in the top ten.^[36] Evans, Félix da Costa and Abt lost half a minute of time because they made their pit stops before the activation of the full course yellow procedure.^[34] Turvey was the race's third retirement after a technical problem affected his second car.^[31] At the front, the lead trio of Buemi, Rosenqvist and Bird were close behind one another and distanced themselves from the rest of the field.^[34] Rosenqvist quickly halved Buemi's advantage and later eased off slightly to allow Buemi to open his lead to a second.^[37] Rosenqvist also had slightly more electrical energy to use than Buemi and was tempting Buemi to use FanBoost.^[31] Buemi however could not use the FanBoost because it was not programmed to work on the car he was driving,^[33] and Rosenqvist used more electrical energy and braked later than Buemi to pass him on the inside for the lead before the end of the backstraight and the turn seven left-hander on lap 29.^[1][29][37]

With three laps to go, Mortara attempted to overtake his teammate Engel—who battled Heidfeld—and the Venturi pair made contact. Engel had little space to negotiate through and ploughed into the side of Heidfeld.^[29] Engel and Heidfeld were able to continue driving but the damage sustained to Mortara's car forced him to park at the side of the circuit and retire.^[41] Piquet set the eace's fastest lap on the penultimate lap, completing a circuit in 1 minute, 22.832 seconds, earning him one point.^[1] Rosenqvist crossed the start/finish line after 33 laps to claim his second win in a row and the third of his career.^[42] Buemi followed 0.945 seconds later in second and Bird completed the podium in third. Off the podium, Piquet equalled his best result of the season in fourth and Vergne took fifth.^[1] López finished sixth despite radio problems losing him access to electrical energy readouts.^[43] Engel was deemed responsible for causing the Heidfeld-Mortara crash and incurred a post-race drive through penalty converted into time, dropping him to twelfth.^[35] Hence, Heidfeld inherited seventh.^[1] Blomqvist was consistent in his debut race and took eighth.^[35] Lynn, Abt, Evans and Engel followed in the next four places.^[4] Prost had 20 seconds added to his race time and was demoted to 13th after he was found to have exceeded the 50 km/h (31 mph) speed limit during the full course yellow flag.^[28] Félix da Costa, d'Ambrosio, Filippi and Mortara were the final finishers.^[1]

The top three drivers appeared on the podium to collect their trophies and spoke to the media in a later press conference. Rosenqvist spoke of his delight of returning to Marrakesh after losing the victory to Buemi in the 2016 race, saying he now felt settled into Formula E and no longer believed he was "a rookie driver", adding "I was learning racecraft in the beginning and losing here was our biggest lesson of the year – we realised we had a lot of work to do and a lot of things to improve."^[44] Buemi stated he did not mind losing the win to Rosenqvist, feeling the latter had "payback" after his victory in the second 2017 Berlin ePrix was revoked because of a sporting infringement, "When you lose a race you always end up a bit disappointed. But everyone thought we had no pace and we were done, and we came here, had pole and finished second. We showed everyone we're still there."^[33] Third-place finisher Bird revealed his car was affected by a rectifiable reoccurring issue since Hong Kong and made the decision not to replace the affected component, "But still, third place is strong points and it’s a third place with a big issue! I didn’t think I was going to finish the race in the first car, I thought I was going to be pulling over and retiring so actually we were quite relieved with the full course yellow came and saved my bacon a little bit."^[32]

Engel was perplexed with the penalty imposed on him for the contact with teammate Mortara and Heidfeld, arguing that he was attempting to avoid any damage where possible by mounting the kerbs on the inside and held the belief that Heidfeld did not leave enough space for him to pass through.^[41] Abt was also annoyed with the drive-through penalty he incurred for his second lap clash with Lynn. He believed it was a "racing incident" and felt the steward's judgement was harsh, saying "In an incident like this Alex is going to say it is my fault and I will say it is more his fault because I think it was avoidable as I was already next to him when I made the move and he turns in."^[41] Di Grassi believed he would have stayed close by Rosenqvist had he not suffered technical problems with his car, saying "As a worst-case scenario, a third place would have been easy to achieve, if not a win."^[44] Audi team principal Allan McNish affirmed the manufacturer would return to competitiveness in the season's upcoming races but admitted his disappointment at the unreliability of the team's cars. He stated his belief this would invigorate a comeback, "We just have to fightback and dig in. It’s like Le Mans. It only finishes at the end of the race, it doesn’t finish halfway through. You have to have the spirit to come back stronger, and we will do that straightaway."^[45]

The final positions moved Rosenqvist to top of the Drivers' Championship for the first time in his career with 54 points.^[6][46] Bird's second-place result dropped him to four points behind Rosenqvist in second while Vergne fell to third place after finishing fifth. Piquet gained three positions to move into fourth on 25 points and Mortara was fifth, one further point behind.^[6] Mahindra further extended their advantage atop of the Teams' Championship on 75 points; Virgin had 17 less points but still maintained second place and Techeetah remained in third. Jaguar overtook Venturi for fourth with nine races left in the season.^[6] Rosenqvist spoke of his satisfaction of leading the championship and revealed it motivated him not to take too many risks in the upcoming races.^[46]

Drivers who scored championship points are denoted in bold.

Final race classification

Pos.	No.	Driver	Team	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	19	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra	33	48:04.751	3	25
2	9	Sébastien Buemi	e.Dams-Renault	33	+0.945	1	18+33
3	2	Sam Bird	Virgin-Citroën	33	+5.762	2	15
4	3	Nelson Piquet Jr.	Jaguar	33	+6.554	7	12+14
5	25	Jean-Éric Vergne	Techeetah-Renault	33	+12.238	13	10
6	6	José María López	Dragon-Penske	33	+16.491	4	8
7	23	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	33	+28.381	18	6
8	27	Tom Blomqvist	Andretti-BMW	33	+32.380	12	4
9	36	Alex Lynn	Virgin-Citroën	33	+33.520	6	2
10	66	Daniel Abt	Audi	33	+40.951	8	1
11	20	Mitch Evans	Jaguar	33	+46.278	9	—
12	5	Maro Engel	Venturi	33	+46.915	14	—5
13	8	Nico Prost	e.Dams-Renault	33	+53.099	16	—6
14	28	António Félix da Costa	Andretti-BMW	33	+1:01.116	19	—
15	7	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon-Penske	33	+1:13.805	15	—
16	68	Luca Filippi	NIO	32	+1 Lap	11	—
Ret	4	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi	30	Engine	17	—
Ret	16	Oliver Turvey	NIO	17	Technical	10	—
Ret	18	André Lotterer	Techeetah-Renault	14	Hardware	20	—
Ret	1	Lucas di Grassi	Audi	7	Battery	5	—
Source:[1][2]

Notes:

• ^3 — Three points for pole position.^[15]
• ^4 — One point for fastest lap.^[15]
• ^5 — Maro Engel had twenty seconds added to his race time for causing a collision.^[41]
• ^6 — Nico Prost was penalised twenty seconds for exceeding the 50 km/h (31 mph) speed limit during the full course yellow period.^[28]

Drivers' Championship standings[6] +/– Pos Driver Points 2 1 Felix Rosenqvist 54 1 2 Sam Bird 50 (−4) 1 3 Jean-Éric Vergne 43 (−11) 3 4 Nelson Piquet Jr. 25 (−29) 1 5 Edoardo Mortara 24 (−30)

Teams' Championship standings[6] +/– Pos Constructor Points 1 Mahindra 75 2 Virgin-Citroën 58 (−17) 3 Techeetah-Renault 43 (−33) 1 4 Jaguar 40 (−35) 1 5 Venturi 30 (−45)

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