Santiago E-Prix: Swiss zero number 🎥
SECOND BMW SEASON WIN In the third race of the 2019/20 FIA Formula E in Chile, the four drivers from Switzerland came away empty-handed. German Maximilian Günther claimed his first victory with BMW. The Eurosport highlights of the third race of the season in Santiago de Chile. In a thrilling finale, Maximilian Günther in the BMW iFE.20 prevailed thanks to an overtaking maneuver in [...]
https://www.facebook.com/fia/videos/650190162185640
The Eurosport highlights of the third race of the season in Santiago de Chile.
In a thrilling finale, Maximilian Günther in the BMW iFE.20 prevailed thanks to an overtaking maneuver on the last lap. In only his third race for the damkit team, the 22-year-old German celebrated the first victory of his Formula E career and became the youngest winner of the electric racing series.
Change at the top of the table
Last year's Formula 2 driver is the first German race win in 609 days (Daniel Abt at the 2018 Berlin E-Prix). Thanks to the 25 points, BMW i Andretti Motorsport took the lead in the team standings. His teammate and previous leader of the standings Alexander Sims (GB) retired early.
The new championship leader is Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne, who brought his Mercedes around the track in sixth place. The two podium places alongside Günther went to Portuguese António Félix da Costa from last year's champion team DS Techeetah and New Zealander Mitch Evans from Panasonic Jaguar Racing.
Sébastien Buemi first in, then out of the points
Despite good starting positions, all four Swiss drivers came away empty-handed in South America. Sébastien Buemi was the only one to make it into the super pole qualifying session of the fastest six from practice.
Starting sixth, he reached the finish in seventh position after 45 minutes and one lap. Due to a technical infringement by the Nissan team, the Vaudois received a 30-second time penalty which relegated him to 13th place and knocked him out of the points.
Mortara with a view to the podium
Edoardo Mortara started directly behind Buemi and moved past him into fifth place. Within striking distance of the leading group, the Geneva driver collided with Félix da Costa, who was later second. The right front suspension of his Mercedes-powered Venturi broke.
With the 18 points from the season opener in Saudi Arabia, Mortara in tenth place is the best-ranked Swiss so far in the year-long championship standings.
Nico Müller on the rise
After a top-5 finish in free practice, Nico Müller messed up qualifying due to a wrong decision, so he had to line up 19th in the Geox Dragon Racing e-race car.
With a good race pace, the rookie advanced to 11th place despite being held up in traffic. Ten subsequent penalty seconds meant twelfth place in the end as the best-ranked Swiss.
Bad luck for the two Porsche drivers
Clear progress, such as he made in the AutoSprintCH interview Neel Jani had hoped for ahead of Chile. The Biel native missed out on the super pole by just 15 hundredths.
Jani started the race in twelfth place. Unfortunately, at the end of the first lap, his Porsche 99X was hit by a competitor in the turmoil before the hairpin and forced into the car next to him. This broke the front suspension.
Nevertheless, the second Swiss Formula E rookie sees bright spots.
Neel Jani: "We definitely had the potential to finish in the points. Now we're looking ahead. If we keep working hard until the next race, we should again have a good chance of being among the front runners. Despite the retirement, I'm still in a positive mood."
His teammate André Lotterer, who had finished 14th in qualifying, was also involved in an incident and had to pit after a few laps for repairs. The runner-up in Race 1 at Diriyah was able to continue the drive to collect valuable kilometers. Because Lotterer had exceeded the maximum amount of energy available on one occasion, the classification exclusion followed retrospectively.
