re-joining the track. On Lap 27, Di Grassi slammed into the wall around Turn 10.
What initially looked like the driver’s mistake transpired to be a suspension failure similar to Chandhok’s His misfortune catapulted in Heidfeld into the lead and Da Costa up to second place.
Further down the field, Senna - whose qualifying had been compromised by Trulli’s crash and some issues with his car and had started in 19th place - was up to 15th by Lap 2 and rapidly progressed through the field aided by FanBoost.
Just as fans were beginning to cheer Heidfeld for breaking his run of bad luck and was heading for a race win, race-control notified Heidfeld’s Venturi team of a Drive-Through penalty for speeding in the pit-lane. The German relinquished his lead to Amlin Aguri’s Da Costa who, after seeing the leaders suffer suspension failures, seemed to ease off his speed to ensure he saw the chequered flag.
Prost who had been running in 4th place on the penultimate lap, was promoted to second place after Abt tangled with Alguersuari. Abt had to retire but Alguersuari was able to continue the race and finish 4th. Piquet Jr took the final podium place – the Brazilian admitted that due to a miscommunication within his team, he was unaware he was on the lead lap – and was therefore extremely happy to learn he had finished in 3rd place.
Senna made it past Vergne for 5th place on the last lap - a very impressive drive by the Brazilian from the back of the grid.
Before the race, some drivers and teams expressed concerns about the heat and how this might affect or derate the battery
performance.
However suspension failures were the main talking points of the Buenos Aires ePrix and it was crowned off with a well-deserved and popular win for Da Costa and Amlin-Aguri. His team-mate Salvador Duran was provisionally classified 8th.
Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird set the fastest time and so gained 2 extra points in addition to the 6 points for his 7th place finish.
Final results
At 19.46h local time, the final results were published and revealed that Amlin-Aguri’s driver Duran has been excluded for Energy Infringement and therefore 8th, 9th and 10th places went to Heidfeld, Servia and Sarrazin respectively.
Nelson Piquet was handed a 5-place grid penalty at the next race for speeding under yellow flags. Jarno Trulli has a 10-place grid penalty for changing his gearbox.
Final Classifications:
1. Antonio Felix da Costa, Amlin Aguri, 48:52.100
2. Nicolas Prost, e.dams-Renault, +5.354s
3. Nelson Piquet Jr, China Racing, +8.552s
4. Jaime Alguersuari, Virgin Racing, +11.148s
5. Bruno Senna, Mahindra Racing, +11.535s
6. Jean-Eric Vergne, Andretti, +11.535s
7. Sam Bird, Virgin Racing, +13.617s
8. Nick Heidfeld, Venturi, +15.464s
9. Oriol Servia, Dragon Racing, +19.334s
10. Stephane Sarrazin, Venturi, +28.973s
11. Ho-Pin Tung, China Racing, +37.858s
12. Marco Andretti, Andretti,+1 lap
13. Daniel Abt, Audi Sport ABT, +2 laps
14. Jerome d’Ambrosio, Dragon Racing, +2 laps
Jarno Trulli, Lucas di Grassi, Sebastien Buemi, Michela Cerruti, Karun Chandhok – Unclassified
Salvador Duran - Excluded