Sebastien Buemi stormed to his fourth Formula E victory by dominating the season opener in Beijing.
The Renault e.Dams driver stormed to pole position by a quarter of a second over teammate Nico Prost, who qualified second on the grid.
Lucas Di Grassi came home second ahead of Nick Heidfeld who completed the podium.
Buemi maintained his lead into turn one while teammate Prost fell to third behind Heidfeld. The Swiss driver began to extend his lead at the front of the field while teammate Prost dropped to fourth after locking-up at turn three.
Simona de Silvestro made another mistake which forced her to retire from the race resulting in the first full course yellow of the season.
The DS Virgin duo of Bird and Vergne struggled to conserve their useable energy and dropped down the grid before the first round of stops.
Lap 13 saw the leaders make their car change while the Dragon duo of Duval and d’Ambrosio stayed out. This decision proved crucial as another full course yellow was deployed allowing the two Dragon cars, Turvey and Berthon to make progress.
Piquet Jr was running in the points, but his NEXTEV TCR car halted temporarily dropping him to the back of the grid.
The remaining couple of laps saw the battle for the podium intensify. Nico Prost was forced to retire from the race after he damaged his rear wing, despite it not impacting his speed, he was shown the black and orange flag.
The two Dragon cars began to pressurise Heidfeld for third, but the German managed to hold on to the final podium place.
Buemi was imperious this weekend meaning all the other teams have a lot of work to do. Heidfeld managed to hold onto third ahead of Duval and D’Ambrosio. Oliver Turvey recovered to a fantastic sixth ahead of rookie Berthon and Bird. Daniel Abt and Stéphane Sarrazin, passing Robin Frijns to the line.
Vergne finished out of the points in 12th ahead of Senna and Villeneuve. Prost, Da Costa and De Silvestro all failed to finish.
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