From the three-way fight to the lead, to a multi-car battle for 12th, the Buenos Aires ePrix lived up to its reputation and once again produced a thriller. Here are what the drivers made of the race.
1st. Sebastien Buemi, Renault e.dams: “Today, with the heat, there were many things to manage. Especially the temperature of the battery. So at the start of the race, I took it pretty easy for a couple of laps to see where we were, and we had the pace to pass the other guys. It went quite easy I have to say. I had everything under control and I got quite a bit of a margin.
“Then on the second car we had some more issues on the brakes so it was quite difficult to actually drive the car. Because of the temperature, the car was not braking straight. At the end of the day, you know in this category there is no point in having a big gap, because if you use energy to create a gap and then you have a safety car, all the energy is gone. So the best thing is to have a little bit of gap, that makes you feel safe, so if you made a little mistake you could get it back.”
2nd. Jean Eric Vergne, TECHEETAH: “Obviously I am really happy, we are a new team and we came from very far away and didn’t have any testing like all the other teams had. New beginnings, new engineers, new powertrain, new everything. We solved the struggles we had in Hong Kong and Marrakesh, I think the whole team did a fantastic job, working really, really hard, sometimes many hours overnight and in the end it paid off. So I am extremely happy, don’t quite have the pace to beat Seb. But we proved today in qualifying that we are faster and in the race I gained back quite a lot. At the end of the race, I had a good car and I’m really happy so a big thank you to the team and I think if we can have a weekend without a mistake, I’m sure we can put the focus into getting a win.”
3rd. Lucas di Grassi, Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport: “In the end it was a good weekend and a good day for us. Clearly we are not on the pace of the Renaults. I had the opposite of what Seb had. My first car was a bit of a mess, going everywhere, oversteering much more than expected, it was quite low on grip overall and I couldn’t drive it. I just tried to carry it to the pits and then after the car change, the second car was good. I managed to catch back Nico, I opened a gap and caught JEV a little bit. It’s part of this championship, the cars sometimes change for very little reason or a very little change makes a big difference.”
4th. Nico Prost, Renault e.dams: “I’m really happy with my race. I think the whole day was good except for qualifying where I missed a little bit. I think I should have been one or two tenths quicker, which would have been good enough for Super Pole, but overall it’s a very strong start to the championship. Qualifying has not been amazing, which usually is one of my strengths, but still I get points every weekend. Seb is driving fantastically at the moment but I’m fighting with Lucas and the championship is going to be very long.”
5th. Nelson Piquet Jr, NextEV NIO: “Our goal this weekend was to have a clean race. We were able to have a bit of a battle here and there but in these kind of races you have to judge what is worth fighting and what we need to do to manage the energy, so I worked to manage the race as best I could. In general it was a satisfactory race and we can take positives in that we are not far off the leaders, which is good. We’ve worked hard the last few months and it shows we are on the right track and making progress."
6th. Loic Duval Faraday Future Dragon Racing: “It’s always a good race here. The track is really good for Formula E and it’s good fun for sure. It’s a tough one when you start in the middle of the pack. You have to attack, you have to overtake, you have to defend. I ended up at the end of the first stint thinking ‘do we stay where we are or do we go for a position’, so we decided to go for position and I pitted one lap early, which you always know is going to make the second stint awful in a way, but we did it and I was good enough on energy. The guys caught me in the beginning and then Jerome arrived and I left him a small gap and he went through, but then I was able to stay with him and save energy and I knew at the end I would have my chance. And then on the last lap I was able to overtake him into Turn 1. I saw there was a yellow flag at Turn 4, so I was able to lift and coast really early. It didn’t help him with his battle with Daniel [Abt] but it worked out pretty well for me.”
7th. Daniel Abt, Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport: “It was a good race, I think a lot of overtaking, a lot of crazy fights and a lot of fun but in the end a good gift for the mechanics had to repair my car after qualifying and I think gaining nine positions is what you call a positive day.”
8th. Jermoe D'Ambrosio, Faraday Future Dragon Racing: "
I think overall we had a good weekend, i think we have turned things back around and both cars are fighting for points, so that’s a good thing. It’s a good base to build on for the remainder of the season. For the race itself, i think it was a really good race for us."
9th. Oliver Turvey, NextEV NIO: “Overall I think qualifying was great. It was my second Super Pole out of three qualifyings and I felt we had a chance today. I had a lock up at the front into Turn 7 and we lost a lot of time. Otherwise I had the quickest middle sector and I was really pleased and we were the only team to get both cars into Super Pole. The start went well and I held fourth through the first corner even though the dirty side of the track was harder to get a good start and then the first part of race felt strong. I was quicker than Lucas and managed to pass him into T4 and get up to third. I had a good feeling with the first car and then unfortunately we lost three places at the pitstop and we need to understand where that time went, because everything went smoothly. But the second car had a few thermal issues which because of the temperature and humidity here was high we knew we were going to struggle with the car a little bit and it was a tough second stint. But I think we did all we could with what we had. It was a shame to lose a few places at the end of the race but we got points again, so we have to take the positives from the weekend.”
10th. Jose Maria Lopez, DS Virgin Racing: “I think there are more positives than negatives to take from this. For sure nobody wants to make a mistake and go off in qually because sometimes it puts the weekend in the bin. You start at the back, but in the end it was a positive especially with the pace we showed. The final result doesn’t show what we could’ve done here. In qualifying I felt really bad – the car at the moment of turning just went loose and it’s very difficult to know what happened. We checked the data and there is nothing really strange. After I started from the back there were a few key points where I started to lose positions and time especially with some traffic. In the pits we had to actually wait for three cars to pass when before we were in front of them, so we lost three positions there and then we had a problem with the software at the end. It was an intense race – so in the end it’s good to come away with some points.”
11th. Antonio Felix da Costa: “It made it very hard when I started with a crash in non -qualifying practice one and we’ve played catch up ever since. We had a lot of small technical issues as well when I kept stopping on track, so it became a snowball of bad things. Nonetheless, we went into the race with a positive mindset but we struggled with the heat and we couldn’t be as efficient as we thought we could be. It was a disappointing race when we’re not fast with bad pace. As a driver and in a team, we need bad days like this to kick ourselves and pick ourselves back up so that’s what I’m hoping we do for Mexico. We have a lot of good people so I think we will be able to do that.”
12th Stephane Sarrazin, Venturi: “A big fight for nothing! We had very bad energy usage. Our car is costing us a lot of energy efficiency. The balance was good but we have too high consumption.”
13th. Mitch Evans, Panasonic Jaguar Racing: “Qualifying was great. We’ve been working hard to optimise our qualifying performance since Marrakesh. We just want to get track position at the start of the race and see how we stacked up against the other guys with our race pace. And it was great to get a lap in and it gives us a lot of confidence getting things right. It’s not easy and we saw a lot of guys out of position, the tyres seem to be very sensitive here. I had a good start in the race, lost a few places being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But after the Full Course Yellow I got those places back. I was racing pretty good with the front guys for the first stint and was feeling great. I could virtually see first place, so that was very encouraging and the guys did a great pitstop. But then after that it sort of slipped away from us. I just couldn’t run at the same pace I could before and unfortunately lost a couple of places at the end of the race and dropped out of the points, but I think as a whole we can be satisfied with our day.”
14th. Robin Frijns, Andretti: “We were struggling with the energy management – I was trying to follow the guys in front of me and also tried to defend from the guys behind me, but I was consuming too much, almost every lap. It seems like the other guys have better race pace. The car feels good and through the corners the grip feels really good but we were lacking energy unfortunately. I hope we can learn from the data and solve this by Mexico.”
15th. Nick Heidfeld, Mahindra: “I think we had a good chance to score some solid points even after a non-optimal qualifying. The biggest problem was seemingly a small technical issue on the pit stop so we undershot the minimum time – just by four tenths but that’s enough unfortunately to get a penalty and drive through. After that I was quite far behind the other guys. I thought I still had a chance to get into the points as I was good on energy as in the first stint. I did one more lap than most of the others - 20 laps. Before that I was 11th but caught up quickly and overtook some cars so I think we could’ve done P6 or P7, so it could’ve been a good result.”
16th. Ma Qing Hua, TECHEETAH: “It’s not a great day. We started the first session for me with a new track as I didn’t race here the last season. There were a few little issues in the car with the brakes so my engineer and the mechanics tried to solve the problem. But it was quite difficult so I carried on to qualifying and unfortunately, I tried to push but the car wasn’t there. The start was not too bad and I tried to catch up with the pace in the front and get involved a little bit with some incidents. I changed to the second car, but that was the car I crashed in during qualifying so the mechanics didn’t have enough time to shake the problem, so I drove with the steering going sideways and not straight but there was nothing we could do. The team had already pushed really hard with trying to get the car on track on time - they did a really good job and that was my race.”
17th. Adam Carroll, Panasonic Jaguar Racing: “Basically the start didn’t go to plan. We had an issue and we need to look into it. The first part of the race was difficult after the drive-through because we had traffic, and once it settled down it was actually pretty good and after the pitstop it felt pretty good and I was able to turn some pretty good laps.”
18th. Felix Rosenqvist, Mahindra: “We decided to go for a longer first stint – 20 laps. I managed to get really close to the guys in front who were on a shorter stint and it was looking really good – I think we were aiming for a top-six finish quite easily if things went right but in the pit stop we had a technical issue and basically I couldn’t get away from my garage. It said BMS error and that was it - so we lost a minute or so. We thought that the race was over so we went for the fastest lap instead, which worked out.”
Ret. Maro Engel, Venturi: “It was a pretty unfortunate day. I had a sense of a problem in qualifying so I didn’t get to do any representative laps. In the race I made some good progress behind Daniel and I had some energy in hand over him when I had a shut down. I had a couple of shut downs so we had to bring it in. Really unfortunate because I think a really strong top-ten finish was possible.”
Ret. Sam Bird, DS Virgin Racing: “Today was just one of those things. However, I was pleased with the pace of the car in the early stages. Let’s hope I can take the fight further in Mexico City!”