Team: Renault e.Dams
Drivers: Nicolas Prost and Sébastien Buemi
Team Principal: Alain Prost, Jean-Paul Driot
2014/15 Championship: 1st – 232 points
As a team, Renault had the best season that they could have hoped for, although they narrowly missed out on taking home both championships. In the inaugural Formula E season, they won the Constructors Championship with one round to go, after Sébastien Buemi won the first race in London and Nicolas Prost finished 7th.
After the season finished, Renault found themselves on 232 points, with a 61 point cushion to second place team Dragon Racing. Buemi finished 2nd on 143 points, which made up approximately 61.5% of the team’s total points. Prost also ended the season well, finding himself with 89 points in 6th place. Both drivers raced for the team in every single round, with 5 results between them that were either outside of the points or retirements.
Both Buemi and Prost are staying with Renault for the next Formula E season, and during testing at Donington Park both drivers did well. While it won’t tell you much about what to expect in the first race, Renault took the fastest lap on 3 of the 6 test days and had at least the 2nd quickest time on 5 of the 6 days.
Driver Name: Sébastien Buemi
Nationality: Swiss
Date of Birth: 31/10/88
Formula E Races: 11
Formula E Wins: 3
2014/15 Championship: 2nd – 143 points
Unfortunately for Buemi, the first race of the Formula E championship ended in retirement on lap 19, after having to pit to fix his rear wing earlier on. However, other than a retirement in Argentina and a finish out of the points in Miami, he finished in the points, collecting 3 wins and 5 podiums overall. At his win in Monaco and the first round in London, Buemi also picked up pole position on qualifying. He was in contention for winning the Drivers’ Championship up until the end of the final lap but ended up losing out to Nelson Piquet Jr. by 1 point.
Buemi first started racing in the Formula BMW ADAC series in 2004, where he stayed for 2 years. Between 2006 and 2008 he raced in a variety of championships including Formula Renault 2.0, Formula 3 Euro and GP2. In 2009 Buemi joined Formula 1 team Scuderia Toro Rosso, where he raced for three seasons. His highest season finish was 15th in 2011, where he scored 15 points.
After he and Toro Rosso team-mate Jaime Alguersuari were dropped from the team for 2012, he joined Red Bull as a test driver and drove for Toyota in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, retiring from the race before the end. In 2013 he joined Toyota for the full World Endurance Championship season, achieving 2nd place at Le Mans and 3rd overall in the LMP1 category along with Anthony Davidson and Stéphane Sarrazin.
2014 was more fruitful for Buemi, who with team-mate Davidson and Toyota Racing won the World Endurance Championship, finishing on the podium at every race except at Bahrain where they finished 10th. He remained in WEC for 2015, although unlike in Formula E hasn’t seen any victories so far this year, his best result being at the 6 Hours of Silverstone with Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima.
Driver Name: Nicolas Prost
Nationality: French
Date of Birth: 18/08/81
Formula E Races: 11
Formula E Wins: 1
2014/15 Championship: 6th – 88 points
It was no surprise to see Nicolas Prost driving for the same team that his dad, 4-time Formula 1 champion Alain Prost, helped create. Prost did well at the start of the season, being quickest in qualification at the first two races of the season, Beijing and Putrajaya. He was rather famously involved in a crash at the final corner of the last lap in Beijing, which ended with Nick Heidfeld going airborne and hitting the barrier. Putrajaya went better for him, finishing the race in 4th, while he achieved second place in Buenos Aires and won the race in Miami. After this, his result was 6th place in Monaco. He will he hoping that he can find his form and keep it going throughout the whole season.
Like his team-mate, Prost started in single-seater championships, finish 9th overall in his first season of French Formula Renault in 2005, moving to Spanish Formula 3 in 2006 where he achieved 4th place and then third the following season. He won the Euroseries 3000 (known as Auto GP from 2010 to 2014) series in his first season.
He moved into the Le Mans Series (now WEC) with Speedy Racing in 2009, who finished joint 5th in the LMP1 category. For the 2010 season, he moved to Rebellion Racing, and in the five full seasons with the team their best championship position was third place in 2011 while in the 24 Hours of Le Mans they achieved fourth both in 2012 and 2014. This year Rebellion Racing returned at Le Mans instead of the WEC season opener in Silverstone.
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