Sebastien Buemi topped the first practice session of the inaugural Paris ePrix, after being the only driver to do a 200kw lap.
There wasn’t much drama in the session, except for a red flag caused by Jerome D’Ambrosio stopping on the start straight due to an issue. Multiple drivers were also caught out at Turn 1 and Turn 8, but no one crashed doing so.
Buemi was one of two drivers to get into the 1m02s, but he was the only one to do a full power lap which was hindered by slow traffic. The race winner at Long Beach Lucas di Grassi was the best if the rest in the Abt Schaeffler car.
Stephane Sarrazin finished the top three with a 1m03.032, while his Venturi teammate Mike Conway was just two tenths of a second slower in fifth. The Venturi team have shown pace throughout the season, and they look like they may be a step ahead of some of their rivals this weekend.
Sam Bird finished fourth with a 1m03.099, while Loic Duval for Dragon Racing rounded up the top six with a 1m03.365. Daniel Abt was slower than his teammate in the practice session and finished it in seventh, but he was near the top for most of the 45 minutes.
The two Mahindra drivers, Bruno Senna and Nick Heidfeld, finished eighth and ninth respectively, with only 0.041 seconds separating them. The defending champion Nelson Piquet Jr finished the session in the top ten, as he looks for a second points finish in Season Two.
Jean-Eric Vergne finished 11th and slower than his teammate Bird yet again. Robin Frijns for Andretti put in some fast laps but ended the session in 12th. While he had issues at the beginning of the session, Antonio Felix da Costa finished 13th.
Simona de Silvestro was 14th in the other Andretti machine, and was the last driver to get a time within a second of Buemi. Nico Prost will be disappointed to be down in 15th and so far away from Buemi. Oliver Turvey was the last of the runners to be able to put in a competitive lap without issues, finishing 16th.
Ma Qing Hua spent most of the time in the pits with car issues similar to his teammate, and got a lot less laps under his belt than he would have wanted on his debut. He did finish ahead of D’Ambrosio however, who stopped on the start straight half-way through the session after his car had an issue.
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