Bird wins Santiago E-Prix after Buemi crashes

Sam Bird has closed in on the Formula E championship lead having won in Santiago after Sebastien Buemi crashed out of the lead.

The Virgin Racing driver hung on to take victory in the face of late pressure from Pascal Wehrlein while Daniel Abt was classified third as a result of a penalty for Alexander Sims.

Buemi started from pole and it was the Nissan e.dams driver heading Wehrlein, Bird, and Abt in the early stages.

They crept away from the rest of the field before Buemi established a margin of his own with attack mode on Lap 6, then Bird used attack mode to overtake Wehrlein on Lap 11.

Buemi was up by about half a second on Lap 22 when he locked a brake at Turn 7 and skated into the wall, ending his race.

Bird might have been gifted the lead but was made to work to hold onto it by Wehrlein, who closed up again with his second attack mode activation with six minutes to run.

However, the German had to relent due to battery temperature in his Mahindra and ultimately finished 6.5s adrift.

BMW Andretti’s Sims had passed Abt on Lap 21 but was given the equivalent of a drive-through penalty for turning Edoardo Mortara around earlier in the race.

The sanction saw Audi driver Abt promoted to third and Sims put back to seventh.

Mortara still went on to finish fourth in his Venturi, ahead of Virgin’s Robin Frijns and Jaguar’s Mitch Evans.

Lucas di Grassi had an eventful day in the second Audi, firstly when he was stripped of pole and sent to the back of the 22-car grid for a braking infringement on his group qualifying in lap.

He made his way to ninth at the chequered flag after 32 laps but found himself 12th in the final classification as a result of a penalty for an incident with Jose Maria Lopez (Dragon).

Jean-Eric Vergne (Techeetah) retired after contact, as did Felipe Massa (Venturi).

Jerome d’Ambrosio holds on to the championship lead by a point having hauled his Mahindra from 20th on the grid to finish eighth.

Race 4 of the season takes place in Mexico City on February 16.

Race results: Race 3, Santiago

Pos	Driver	Team	Laps	Race time/Split
1	Sam Bird	Envision Virgin Racing	36	47:02.511
2	Pascal Wehrlein	Mahindra Racing	36	+6.489
3	Daniel Abt	Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler	36	+14.529
4	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi Formula E Team	36	+17.056
5	Robin Frijns	Envision Virgin Racing	36	+20.276
6	Mitch Evans	Panasonic Jaguar Racing	36	+23.755
7	Alexander Sims	BMW i Andretti Motorsport	36	+27.590
8	Jérôme d’Ambrosio	Mahindra Racing	36	+41.984
9	Oliver Turvey	NIO Formula E Team	36	+45.059
10	José María López	Geox Dragon	36	+45.376
11	Nelson Piquet Jnr	Panasonic Jaguar Racing	36	+48.635
12	Lucas di Grassi	Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler	36	+1:03.552
13	André Lotterer	DS Techeetah	36	+1:14.706
14	Gary Paffett	HWA Racelab	35	+1 Lap
DNF	Oliver Rowland	Nissan e.dams	31
DNF	António Félix da Costa	BMW i Andretti Motorsport	23
DNF	Jean-Éric Vergne	DS Techeetah	22
DNF	Sébastien Buemi	Nissan e.dams	21
DNF	Stoffel Vandoorne	HWA Racelab	17
DNF	Maximilian Günther	Geox Dragon	12
DNF	Felipe Massa	Venturi Formula E Team	12
DNF	Tom Dillmann	NIO Formula E Team	10

Drivers’ championship

Pos	Driver	Pts
1	Jérôme d’Ambrosio	44
2	Sam Bird	43
3	António Félix da Costa	28
4	Robin Frijns	28
5	Jean-Éric Vergne	28
6	Mitch Evans	22
7	Daniel Abt	21
8	André Lotterer	19
9	Pascal Wehrlein	18
10	Alexander Sims	18
11	Sébastien Buemi	15
12	Edoardo Mortara	12
13	Lucas di Grassi	9
14	Oliver Rowland	6
15	Oliver Turvey	2
16	Nelson Piquet Jnr	1
17	José María López	1
18	Maximilian Günther	0
19	Tom Dillmann	0
20	Gary Paffett	0
21	Stoffel Vandoorne	0
22	Felipe Massa	0
23	Felix Rosenqvist	0