Sam Bird became Formula E’s second ever winner, the Briton dominating round two of the all-electric series on the Putrajaya street circuit in Malaysia.
Bird first took the lead on lap four, barging past pole-sitter Oriol Servia when the race was restarted following a lap-one safety car casued by a collision between Katherine Legge and Michela Cerruti.
Once in front Bird immediately gapped the field, his lead ballooning to nearly three seconds within two laps.
And his pace didn’t come at the expense of efficiency either; Bird was the last of the drivers to make his car swap, pitting for a fresh set of wheels on lap 19.
The Virgin Racing driver emerged from the stop second, a long way behind Daniel Abt, who was the first driver to stop, but it didn’t take long for Bird to hunt the German down. On lap 25 he made his move to retake the lead, and once in front he could cruise to victory.
“It’s been an amazing week so far,” said Bird. “We were quick from the first outing. Qualifying didn’t quite go our way, but we put that right in the race.”
China winner Lucas di Grassi came from the ninth row of the grid to finish second. The Brazilian had a clean first stint, before inheriting some spots on lap 23 when Jarno Trulli and Nelson Piquet, who were running third and fourth at the time, had a coming together on the approach to the first corner, taking both out of the race.
That left di Grassi third before his team-mate Abt started to run low on power with a couple of laps remaining and cleared the way for the Brazilian to comfortably slide through to take second.
“I felt like I had a better race than Beijing, even though I won in Beijing,” di Grassi said. “I’m very happy, and will have a good party tonight.”
Sebastien Buemi, who started on the last row of the grid, finished third, just over a second behind di Grassi.
Nicolas Prost finished fourth, but it could so easily have been fifth. Having battled for the majority of the second stint with team-mate Buemi, Prost was held up when Abt backed off to let di Grassi through.
It not only forced to Prost to concede third to Buemi, but left him a sitting duck for Bruno Senna, who used his FanBoost power to motor past into fourth less than a lap later.
But on the last lap Senna got his approach to the fast turn nine left-hander wrong, and ended up in the wall and out of the race.
That moved Jerome d’Ambrosio into fifth, ahead of Karun Chandhok and Servia. Antonio Felix da Costa finished eighth, Jaime Alguesuari ninth, while Abt – who was leading just six laps before the end – trundled home in 10th.
Meanwhile, Nick Heidfeld’s poor luck continued. While running well inside the top 10 early on he was pushed into the turn five wall by Franck Montagny, ending his race on the spot.
