The track was very dusty at the start of the 45-minute session, illustrated as Felix Rosenqvist suffered a huge slide and just kept his Mahindra out of the barrier.

With barely 10 minutes on the clock, his teammate Nick Heidfeld crashed at Turn 12, with Daniel Abt in close proximity, as Andre Lotterer, Alex Lynn and Sam Bird quickly screeched to halt behind.

That caused a red flag as the entire field eventually became stacked-up behind the stationary German.

A second red flag was soon required as Jose Maria Lopez broke his Dragon’s right-rear suspension on the kerb at Turn 12, and he got stuck in the pit lane entry.

“It looks like the kerbing sheared off the rear suspension,” said team chief Jay Penske.

After a lengthy recovery process, there were only nine minutes remaining – before another 10 minutes were added to the session to make up for the delays.

NIO’s Oliver Turvey had set the early pace with a lap of 1m15.417s, before Sebastien Buemi and title-contender Bird swapped the top spot between them.

Di Grassi hit the top with a lap of 1m14.236s, just before Nelson Piquet’s Jaguar stopped on Pioneer Street on the exit of Turn 12. He was able to restart the car and drive back to the pits.

Di Grassi improved to 1m14.017s, before Buemi broke the 1m14s barrier with 1m13.916s. Di Grassi wouldn’t be denied, however, setting a 1m13.566s despite encountering traffic in the middle sector.

Buemi was 0.350s slower in second, ahead of Jaguar’s Mitch Evans.

Of the title contenders, Vergne was fourth, 0.722s off the pace, and Bird sixth, just 0.03s slower than Vergne. Abt was between them in fifth.

Venturi’s Maro Engel was a late crasher, but escaped with only minor damage.

Practice results:

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	1	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	1'13.566
2	9	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	1'13.916	0.350
3	20	Mitch Evans	Jaguar Racing	1'14.027	0.461
4	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'14.288	0.722
5	66	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	1'14.310	0.744
6	2	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	1'14.336	0.770
7	6	Jose Maria Lopez	Dragon Racing	1'14.342	0.776
8	16	Oliver Turvey	NIO Formula E Team	1'14.364	0.798
9	36	Alex Lynn	Virgin Racing	1'14.373	0.807
10	18	Andre Lotterer	Techeetah	1'14.441	0.875
11	19	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra Racing	1'14.590	1.024
12	7	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	1'14.690	1.124
13	8	Nicolas Prost	DAMS	1'14.714	1.148
14	3	Nelson Piquet Jr.	Jaguar Racing	1'14.849	1.283
15	28	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti Autosport	1'14.935	1.369
16	27	Stéphane Sarrazin	Andretti Autosport	1'15.056	1.490
17	4	Tom Dillmann	Venturi	1'15.165	1.599
18	23	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	1'15.242	1.676
19	5	Maro Engel	Venturi	1'15.566	2.000
20	68	Luca Filippi	NIO Formula E Team	1'16.102	2.536