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Formula E Hong Kong ePrix

Bird gets 10-place grid penalty for pitlane incident

Formula E opening race winner Sam Bird's Saturday pitlane incident has earned him a 10-place grid penalty for the second part of this weekend's Hong Kong ePrix.

Scott Mitchell

Edited: Dec 2, 2017, 1:25 PM

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Sam Bird, DS Virgin Racing

Neel Jani, Dragon Racing, andSam Bird, DS Virgin Racing, signs autographs for fans

Sam Bird, DS Virgin Racing

The DS Virgin Racing driver took victory in the first race of the 2017/18 season despite picking up a drive-through penalty for an incident in the mid-race car swap.

Bird overshot his mark in the pitlane and almost slid into a group of bystanders as he nerfed into the side of the DS Virgin Racing garage.

He abandoned the DSV-03 and ran to the second car, which incurred a penalty because his swap started outside the garage.

However, Bird has now been hit with an additional sanction for “dangerous driving in the pitlane”.

He keeps his race win, and therefore the championship lead, but goes into Sunday’s race with a 10-place grid drop.

DS Virgin had not been expected to have the outright pace of Audi Sport Abt or Renault e.dams ahead of the season opener, but with Bird it executed a strong race as its rivals faltered.

“The car felt great but sometimes Formula E is hard to understand,” Bird told Motorsport.com. “Today we were just really quick. The guys gave me a great car and we maximised it today.”

Bird’s path to victory began with a strong move on Jean-Eric Vergne after selling the Techeetah driver a dummy heading into the Turn 6 hairpin.

“I knew that was the area that I could exploit and I just needed to get another half a metre closer than I had been the whole stint,” said Bird. “I got the half metre and I took a chance.”

In addition to Bird’s penalty, the stewards have also demoted Felix Rosenqvist and disqualified Andre Lotterer.

Rosenqvist loses his seventh place finish after picking up a 22 second time penalty, in lieu of a drivethrough, for exceeding the maximum race power output of 180kW.

That drops the Mahindra driver to 14th, handing seventh to Edoardo Mortara, eighth to Alex Lynn, ninth to Nico Prost and NIO’s debutant Luca Filippi a point-paying 10th.

The stewards disqualified Lotterer for leaving his car in an unsafe mode in parc ferme, capping an abysmal debut for the former Porsche LMP1 driver.

Lotterer sparked the red flag on the opening lap, then picked up a five-second time penalty when his Techeetah team failed to remove a cooling device in time before the restart.

He then earned a drive-through penalty for using the escape road at the Turn 3/4 chicane without coming to a complete stop before rejoining the circuit.

After serving this, Lotterer had 22 seconds added to his race time in lieu of a drive-through penalty for the same offence, then received the exclusion post-race.

Revised race results:

Pos.DriverTeamTime/Gap 1 united_kingdom Sam Bird Virgin Racing 43 laps 2 france Jean-Eric Vergne china Techeetah 11.575 3 germany Nick Heidfeld india Mahindra Racing 12.465 4 brazil Nelson Piquet Jr. Jaguar Racing 15.324 5 germany Daniel Abt germany Team Abt 17.205 6 portugal Antonio Felix da Costa united_states Andretti Autosport 18.083 7 italy Edoardo Mortara monaco Venturi 19.797 8 united_kingdom Alex Lynn Virgin Racing 20.904 9 france Nicolas Prost france DAMS 24.785 10 italy Luca Filippi china NIO Formula E Team 25.500 11 switzerland Sébastien Buemi france DAMS 26.202 12 new_zealand Mitch Evans Jaguar Racing 34.871 13 germany Maro Engel monaco Venturi 35.752 14 sweden Felix Rosenqvist india Mahindra Racing 41.174 15 japan Kamui Kobayashi united_states Andretti Autosport 48.422 16 united_kingdom Oliver Turvey china NIO Formula E Team 1 lap 17 brazil Lucas di Grassi germany Team Abt 1 lap 18 switzerland Neel Jani Dragon Racing 1 lap 19 belgium Jérôme d'Ambrosio Dragon Racing 9 laps DQ germany Andre Lotterer china Techeetah -

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