Both Andretti drivers enjoyed a duel for 10th position during the first half of the race, but whilst Frijns continued to battle for points, de Silvestro fell off and a late off-track excursion dropped her down to 15th.
The first half of the race for Andretti was positive, with both of their drivers (Robin Frijns & Simona de Silvestro) trading places on numerous occasions whilst the duo battled over the final points scoring position, with Frijns getting the upper hand heading into the pit stops.
In his second car Frijns overtook Sarrazin almost instantly, then went on to pass Heidfeld and Bird later on in the race to finish sixth overall (5th following Di Grassi’s disqualification).
For de Silvestro the day got off to a good start, with the Swiss driver qualifying 11th (her best qualifying result so far this season). The race, however, was a story of two halves, with the first half consisting of an intriguing battle with her teammate, whilst the second half was full of frustration as she went from fighting for her first points of the season to 15th overall after an off-track excursion.
Speaking about the race, Robin Frijns said: “The race was good with the first car and I had a nice and good fight with my teammate. I overtook her, she overtook me back and I overtook her back so that was good fun.”
“With the second car it went really well. I overtook Sarrazin from the first lap onward but Simona couldn’t overtake him so she was really unlucky. She lost ground to the group I was in, but her pace was good. Good enough to easily follow us. I was driving behind bird and Heidfeld, I had a little gap and I was saving a lot of energy to have an attack for the last five laps, which I did. I saw that bird was using a lot of energy to take over Heidfeld; it took him a couple of laps to overtake him and when he eventually overtook him and it only took me one corner to overtake Heidfeld. Then I went for Bird and overtook him also in one go so I had quite a lot of energy left for defending him off so everything went planned.”
Simona de Silvestro said: “We had a pretty good qualifying, pretty good first stint. Second stint we really struggled a bit and kind of were stuck behind some people and couldn’t get around them. Near the end I went a little bit in the grey and lost two positions there. So, a bit frustrating but first stint was good so we’ll remember that one. The team did a really good job the whole weekend. It was fun because you know qualifying was pretty good and we were right there in the first car.”
