After all the penalties, the final starting Order was Buemi, Di Grassi, D’Ambrosio, Piquet, Abt, Prost, Senna, Sarrazin, Duran, Bird, Vergne, Trulli, Speed, Duval, Liuzzi, Heidfeld, Alguesuari, Pic, da Costa and Chandok.
As the lights went out Buemi and Di Grassi made a good start off the line but there was chaos just behind them with Abt and Prost getting into a tussle into Turn 1 resulting in Abt being squeezed into the wall. The consequence saw Bruno Senna’s vault Abt’s stationary car and crash land. The resulting pile-up saw the safety car deployed with several other drivers including Alguersuari, Duran, Liuzzi, Vergne and Duval forced to retire from the race or limp back to the pits.
The top 4 order remained virtually the same at the restart but by Lap 6, Piquet Jr scythed past D’Ambrosio in a brilliant overtaking move and was now behind fellow Brazilian, Di Grassi - whom he claimed held him up during qualifying.
As the pit-stop window approached, Di Grassi opted for an aggressive strategy for a chance to “undercut” the eDams Renault driver, Buemi:
“I decided myself inside the car and told the team, I said ‘look guys I am going to go for a very aggressive first stint, going to try to gain track position, going to push like hell with the second car and after that I see what happens,” said di Grassi.
It was a good plan but however Buemi re-joined the track just ahead of Di Grassi - the Brazilian’s attempts to overtake proving unsuccessful. His worries were further compounded by the fact that the aggressive strategy he was now on meant he had to converse more energy while defending from a rapidly approach (and still miffed) Piquet Jr.
In the closing stages of the race Piquet Jr was given the order to push by his team and he obliged by implementing FanBoost to attempt a pass Di Grassi – however this almost resulted in contact and Piquet decided to consolidate the 3rd place.
Image: FIA FormulaE