Alexander Sims claimed a lights-to-flag victory for BMW Andretti in Formula E’s second race in Diriyah.
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However, the team missed out on a potential one-two when Maximilian Günther was penalised for a Safety Car infringement, promoting Stoffel Vandoorne onto the podium for Mercedes in their debut weekend in the series.
Starting from pole for the second time in 24 hours, Sims lined up with Sebastien Buemi alongside him, Lucas di Grassi and Mitch Evans behind, and a gap where Jerome D’Ambrosio’s car had stopped after a failure on the grid.
The start was clean and Sims held the lead through the opening phase despite a strong challenge from Di Grassi, who made a move on Buemi. With 33 minutes remaining, Antonio Felix da Costa clipped the rear of Buemi as the Nissan driver tried to activate Attack Mode; Buemi rejoined across the track and forced team mate Oliver Rowland wide.
All drivers recovered and the race continued, but five minutes later Da Costa—running third in heavy traffic—attempted a pass on Di Grassi that sparked a chain reaction. Di Grassi defended aggressively, which squeezed Da Costa into Sam Bird and Mitch Evans. Bird and Evans made contact and hit the wall; Evans retired to the pits while Bird continued briefly before being hit by Pascal Wehrlein, putting the race-one winner into the barrier.
The Safety Car was deployed while debris was cleared, and under the new 2019-20 rules drivers had 5kWh deducted for that period. The restart proved controversial: several drivers took Attack Mode while others did not, leading to position changes before the Safety Car line—a situation that should not have occurred under the rules.
Günther benefited from the restart and initially moved from fifth to third without immediate investigation. The green flag run was short-lived when Virgin’s second car retired after Robin Frijns slid on dust and hit the wall. Da Costa received a drive-through penalty for the earlier contact with Buemi, removing him from contention among the front runners.
A second Safety Car was called with around 10 minutes remaining, alarmingly before Frijns’s car had been fully removed and while marshals were still on track. Race control brought in a brief Full Course Yellow to allow safe recovery. Sims retained the lead through both restarts. In total, 12kWh was deducted from the starting allocation to account for the combined neutralisations.
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Mitch Evans, who had recovered to 10th, was later handed a drive-through penalty for his contact with Bird. Andre Lotterer also received a 10-second time penalty shortly before the finish. Despite Di Grassi’s best efforts, he could not find a way past Günther and the leading trio crossed the line with Sims first, Günther second and Di Grassi third.
After the race the stewards applied a 24-second time penalty to Günther for overtaking under the Safety Car, promoting Stoffel Vandoorne to third and giving Mercedes a second podium of the weekend. Further penalties for Oliver Turvey for overuse of power promoted Brendon Hartley to his first Formula E points finish, providing a rare positive for the Dragon team on an otherwise difficult day.
Sims’s win moves him to the top of the drivers’ standings, eight points clear of Vandoorne. The championship now pauses until the next round on January 18 in Santiago, Chile.
Provisional results:
1. Alexander Sims – BMW Andretti
2. Lucas di Grassi – Audi Abt
3. Stoffel Vandoorne – Mercedes
4. Edoardo Mortara – Venturi
5. Oliver Rowland – Nissan e.dams
6. Nyck de Vries – Mercedes
7. Daniel Abt – Audi Abt
8. James Calado – Jaguar
9. Jean-Eric Vergne – DS Techeetah
10. Brendon Hartley – Dragon
11. Antonio Felix da Costa – DS Techeetah
12. Maximilian Günther – BMW Andretti
13. Sebastien Buemi – Nissan e.dams
14. Andre Lotterer – Porsche
15. Pascal Wehrlein – Mahindra
16. Mitch Evans – Jaguar
17. Felipe Massa – Venturi
18. Ma Qinghua – NIO
DNF: Nico Müller – Dragon
DNF: Robin Frijns – Virgin
DNF: Sam Bird – Virgin
DNF: Jerome D’Ambrosio – Mahindra
DSQ: Oliver Turvey – NIO
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