Vergne lowers lap record on penultimate Formula E test day

Reigning champion Sebastien Buemi had already broken through Vergne's benchmark of 1m29.634s in the morning session as he set a 1m29.496s in the Renault e.dams machine.

That remained the quickest time for much of the day until the Swiss improved again at the start of the final half hour of running in the afternoon session, Buemi lowering the bar to a 1m29.370s.

Not be outdone, however, Vergne - whose Techeetah machine uses customer Renault power - clocked a 1m29.196s with around 15 minutes to go, beating the record he established in the first test by 0.438s.

The day didn't go entirely smoothly for Vergne however, as he suffered a crash late in the morning session that left the rear wing of one of his chassis damaged.

Lucas di Grassi was the third driver to break Vergne's previous record, recording a 1m29.518s in the closing stages of the afternoon to go third fastest in the Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport machine.

Nicolas Prost made it two Renault e.dams machines in the top four, ahead of the second Abt Schaeffler car of Daniel Abt and the Mahindra of Nick Heidfeld.

The morning times of DS Virgin duo Jose Maria Lopez and Sam Bird proved enough for seventh and eighth overall, while the top 10 was completed by Oliver Turvey (NextEV) and Loic Duval (Dragon).

Mitch Evans was the best of the Jaguar runners in 14th place, the Kiwi lapping two tenths quicker than teammate Adam Carroll had managed on Monday.

Day 5 testing times:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Morning	Afternoon
1	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'31.709	1'29.196
2	Sebastien Buemi	Renault	1'29.496	1'29.370
3	Lucas di Grassi	ABT Schaeffler	1'32.207	1'29.518
4	Nicolas Prost	Renault	1'30.151	1'29.722
5	Daniel Abt	ABT Schaeffler	1'30.741	1'30.039
6	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	1'30.607	1'30.080
7	Jose Maria Lopez	DS-Virgin	1'30.126	1'30.500
8	Sam Bird	DS-Virgin	1'30.282	1'32.001
9	Oliver Turvey	NEXTEV TCR	1'30.854	1'30.312
10	Loic Duval	Dragon	1'31.329	1'30.388
11	Nelson Piquet Jr.	NEXTEV TCR	1'31.116	1'30.422
12	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra	1'30.979	1'30.438
13	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti	1'33.416	1'30.536
14	Mitch Evans	Jaguar	1'31.027	1'30.582
15	Robin Frijns	Andretti	1'33.295	1'30.648
16	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	1'30.671	1'35.770
17	Adam Carroll	Jaguar	1'30.874	1'33.536
18	Maro Engel	Venturi	1'31.168	1'32.584
19	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon	1'32.369	1'32.414
20	Ma Qing Hua	Techeetah	1'32.644	1'31.309