Sam Bird takes victory at Diriyah in Race 1
- Shahmir Khan
- Nov 22, 2019
- 3 min read
Envision Virgin Racing driver Sam Bird took his first victory of 2019-20 Formula E season, after passing Stoffel Vandoorne late in the race on streets of Riyadh.
The Formula E veteran made a pass on Vandoorne at Turn 15 with 10 minutes on the clock.
The British driver then continued to stay up front as the race was neutralised with just above 6 minutes to go.
Vandoorne, who started 2nd played gamble to attack his second attack mode, but dropped behind Porsche's Andre Lotterer in the process and never recovered as safety car period was triggered by the hard-crashing Audi of Daniel Abt.
The race resumed with 2 minutes on the clock as Bird jumped quickly ahead of Lotterer to solidify his lead and come home taking his eighth victory.
He continues his record of winning in every Formula E season since the series took off in 2014-15.
It was also a strong result for the series debutants Porsche and Mercedes, both managing to get on podium places.
Pole sitter Alexander Sims made a brilliant start in early stages of the race, keeping the pack behind him as all cars completed first laps without any trouble.
Sims then managed to continue his lead after activating the first attack mode but Bird started gaining momentum on his rivals as the race progressed late on. Soon enough, he made a pass on De Vries into Turn 18 to take 3rd place.
Vandoorne then braked late to make a move on Sims for the lead as Sims then got passed on the same corner by Bird.
Bird then edged closer to the Mercedes driver before making a pass on Belgian as energy management came into play with less than 20% energy left.
Sims meanwhile, struggled to then make a good start and dropped down to eighth position with De Vries also settling for 6th place after a small contact.
As Bird passed Vandoorne, the Belgian quickly took the outside line to activate attack mode and dropped behind Lotterer as well but missed any chances to gain position as his attack mode was wasted under safety car conditions.
Vandoorne finished 3rd on his Mercedes debut, his best finish in Formula E matching Rome last year.
Oliver Rowland finished just behind Vandoorne in third after challenging for podium place late in the race while Robin Frijns finished 5th for Envision Virgin Racing.
De Vries was sixth, ahead of Edoardo Mortara, Sims, Jerome D'Ambrosio and Mitch Evans.
Reigning Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne had an unlucky race, with both him and his team scoring no points in the race after pitting with mechanical failure.
Several cars were handed drive-through penalties late in the race, including Brendon Hartley, Maximilian Guenther and Ma Qing Hua for breaching the technical regulations concerning throttle map issues that is found to be mimicking traction control in the car.
4 cars retired in the race, with Vergne, Abt and Sebastien Buemi, who had to retire on the side of track early in the race. GEOX Dragon's Nico Mueller didn't take start in the race after crashing in qualifying session, becoming the first off-track retirement of race.
The second race begins tomorrow on 8:45 am local time with Free Practice 3, before qualifying and race later in the day to conclude the weekend.
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