Bird Wins in Battersea as Piquet Crowned Champion

Nelson Piquet has been crowned Formula E champion after a heroic drive from 16th on the grid to finish 8th.

After making up three places at the start, the Brazilian took a steady first half of the race to conserve power which allowed him to stay out a lap longer.

Piquet rejoined the race in 10th place behind his rookie teammate Oliver Turvey narrowly staying ahead of Prost.

A safety car period to recover the crashed Virgin Racing car of Fabio Leimer allowed the two teammates to get closer. Once the safety car was pitted, the NEXTEV TCR team employed team orders and allowed Piquet to get ahead of Turvey for P9.

A lap later Piquet made a charging move around the outside of Salvador Duran to finish in 8th place.

Championship contenders Buemi, and di Grassi didn’t quite do enough to overhaul Piquet’s points advantage; Buemi spinning and losing a vital place.

Buemi was desperate to pass the impressive Bruno Senna. Buemi fought hard to pass the Mahindra driver in 5th place, even making contact at times, but Senna’s defensive driving denied the Swiss a championship winning position.

At the front of the grid Sarrazin lead for the majority of the race and, after the safety car, managed to fend off a quick Sam Bird who had pipped the two Dragon cars into 2nd with superb moves.

However, the Frenchman exceeded his maximum amount of usable power, running at 0% over the line. This caused him to get a drive thru penalty time added to his race finish and ended up in 16th place. Sam Bird also set the fastest lap of the race.

Nick Heidfeld had to pit his first car in the first half of the race but couldn’t quite make up ground in the second half.

Retirements included Virgin Racing rookie Fabio Leimer crashed his car into the barrier, Yamamoto who clipped Trulli and crashed into the barriers, and Trulli who retired with accident damage.

Piquet finished just one point ahead of Buemi with 144. Di Grassi ended up a distant third with 133.

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