Following two pit stops and an frenetic race, Lucas Di Grassi took unpredictable win in the Mexico e-Prix from Jean-Eric Vergne and Sam Bird while Sébastien Buemi did not score points.
After qualifying, Daniel Abt lost his pole position due to tyre pressures infringements. He would start from P18 while Oliver Turvey started on pole for the first time in his FE career. José Maria Lopez and Jean-Eric Vergne started behind Turvey.
Great start from Oliver Turvey and Jean-Eric Vergne although Nick Heidfeld went through to claim P3 from Vergne. In the back, Maro Engel hit Lucas Di Grassi’s car taking off his rear wing. On the second lap, Antonio Felix Da Costa went off in the first lap. More chaos at the back of the field involved the arrival of the safety car. Di Grassi tried to benefit from the safety car to change his rear wing. Prost also was shown the black and orange flag, forcing him to pit to fix his nose.
Safety car came in after three laps and no incident was to report at the restart. Lopez went racy behind Turvey while Buemi passed Rosenqvist to get up to 6th. The Swiss set the fastest lap as soon as he had clear air. Meanwhile, Gutiérrez went dropping off the order. On lap 6, Di Grassi, Abt and Buemi were awarded the fanboost. Heidfeld on P3 was the leading car of a four-car-train with Buemi urging behind Bird.
On lap 13, Oliver Turvey went into trouble and had to turn on and off his car, giving Lopez the lead of the race. His car remained on track for a few laps before the safety car gathered the pack to collect the Nextev NIO. Jérôme D’Ambrosio eventually hit his teammate Loïc Duval and was forced to pit. On lap 18, with 27 laps to go, Di Grassi gambled and changed car in hope of re-joining the pack before the safety car went in.
On the restart, Lopez nailed the restart, getting away from Heidfeld while Vergne desperately tried to overtake the German. Vergne was the first leading driver to pit with twenty laps to go and tried to undercut all the other drivers who went for another lap except Prost and Duval. The Frenchman managed to pass Heidfeld in the pit while Duval stopped his car before pitting.
On lap 27, after all the pitstops, Di Grassi and D’Ambrosio were leading from Lopez and Vergne. Buemi also lost a lot of time in the pits and was P10. Duval’s incident deployed the safety car which ruined the gap between the top 2 and the ‘regular’ racers.
The safety car came in on lap 30 with 27 minutes to go. Both Andretti were under investigation for not respecting the minimum pitstop time. At the restart, Vergne showed himself extremely threatening to Lopez until pushing him off, forcing him to cut the chicane. Da Costa slowed down on lap 33 and had to stop his car. While Lopez tried to overtake D’Ambrosio, Lopez spun on turn 1 moments before Buemi also spun at the same place.
D’Ambrosio was holding up Vergne and Bird for a few laps while Rosenqvist threatened his teammate Heidfeld. Di Grassi’s gambled started to pay off with Vergne stuck behind the Belgian. With three laps to go, Vergne finally managed to pass D’Ambrosio who locked up on T1.
In the meantime, Prost attacked Heidfeld and this led to a mayhem in the stadium involving both Mahindra and Abt. D’Ambrosio could not reach the end of the race.
Lucas Di Grassi could reach the end of the race and claimed the win from Jean–Eric Vergne and Sam Bird. Evans, Prost, Lopez, Abt, Carroll, Piquet and Gutiérrez completed the top 10.
