2016 Marrakesh ePrix: Buemi Wins Formula E's First African Race

The 2016 Marrakesh ePrix was staged in Morocco on 12 November 2016, before a crowd of 7,000. The round was the second of the 2016-17 season and the first occasion on which the series raced on African soil. Sebastien Buemi of e.Dams-Renault won the 33-lap race from seventh on the grid.

Who won the 2016 Marrakesh ePrix?

Buemi took the chequered flag first after a drive that included a late-race pass on Felix Rosenqvist, who had started from pole. Sam Bird of Virgin finished second, and Rosenqvist was third for Mahindra. It was Buemi's second straight win and his eighth in the series.

Buemi arrived in Morocco as the championship leader, having won in Hong Kong the round before. He knew the two tracks were very different, and he admitted that Hong Kong would be hard to match. His team worked hard on every detail, and he was keen to get on track.

Rosenqvist had a different objective. He wanted to carry the momentum Mahindra had built at the previous round, and he wanted to extract as much as possible from his car, even if that meant learning more about it. He was unsure whether the layout suited his style, since it asked for a different rhythm from the Hong Kong circuit.

A seventh-place start, a two-second lead lost on energy and a penalty that ended one challenge for the win in Morocco.

How did the race unfold?

Rosenqvist made a strong start from pole and had a two-second lead over Bird by the fourth lap. Buemi, meanwhile, moved steadily through the field and took the lead on lap 27 with a move at turn eleven. He held the lead to the finish after a series of mandatory pit stops and an energy battle that favoured him.

Rosenqvist kept the lead into the first corner. Bird narrowly kept second ahead of Piquet and Vergne. Abt tried a move around the outside of Vergne into turn one, but both ran wide when Piquet's tyres locked, and Abt then had to hold off Prost on the inside.

On the fourth lap Rosenqvist still had his two-second cushion. He told the team that the display on his steering wheel showed only one page, which limited the information he could read during the stint.

Buemi made steady progress. On lap three he went around the outside of Prost at turn seven, climbing into sixth, and he moved into fifth on lap seven by braking later than Abt into turn ten. Vergne drafted Piquet along the straight, and when Piquet's tyres locked at the first corner, Vergne slipped past on the inside to take third at the start of the ninth lap.

Prost took seventh from Abt at the first corner on lap ten, and Abt then held off a large group of cars behind him.

Felix da Costa halted at turn eight on lap twelve. His team sent radio instructions for a full reset, which avoided a full course yellow, and he rejoined at the back. He later retired, becoming the first retirement of the race.

By the fourteenth lap Rosenqvist was almost five seconds clear of Bird, while Vergne was closing on Bird at four-tenths of a second per lap. Vergne passed Bird for second at the start of the fifteenth lap, and Bird did not fight back. Mandatory stops, where each car swapped to a second vehicle, began on the next lap.

Buemi and Bird stayed out for one more lap. Buemi then caught Bird and passed him at turn eleven on lap 17, braking late and keeping the car on track. Piquet suffered an electrical fault that ended his points hopes, and Engel stopped with a power problem after his pit stop. Rosenqvist regained the lead after the stops, with about four seconds over Vergne.

What cost Vergne the lead?

Vergne was second for much of the race when the stewards began investigating him for speeding in the pit lane on lap 20. He received a drive-through penalty two laps later, which ended any realistic chance of victory. Buemi inherited second place and went on to win. Vergne had passed Bird for second earlier in the race, so the penalty removed the strongest challenger to the leader.

Rosenqvist had come in for his stop a lap ahead of everyone else, so he was conserving electrical energy at the front. That allowed Buemi, who had used FanBoost and had more energy in hand, to close on him by almost two seconds per lap. Buemi then went around Rosenqvist on the outside of turn eleven and took the lead.

Vergne argued that he could have won. He blamed a defective speed limit button and said Buemi, who was far back at the time, would have had to spend a lot of energy catching him, leaving him with nothing extra to pass. Vergne was then fifth, behind Prost and ahead of both Audi cars, until di Grassi went past him at turn seven and took fifth.

How did qualifying set the grid?

Rosenqvist claimed pole in 1 minute, 21.509 seconds, which was also Mahindra's first pole in the series. Buemi lost five grid places after an underweight fire extinguisher, and a team error stopped Vergne from taking his Super Pole lap. Buemi was also fined 2,500 euros.

Qualifying ran for 60 minutes, split into four groups of five cars chosen by lottery. Each car had six minutes of track time, and the fastest five went through to Super Pole, which ran in reverse order from fifth to first. Vergne set the quickest group time at 1 minute, 20.993 seconds.

Vergne could not take his Super Pole lap because an error by his team meant he missed the 30-second window to leave the pit lane. Piquet was first out in Super Pole, locked his tyres heavily and qualified fourth. Bird drove cautiously to improve the balance of his car and took third, while Buemi missed the apex at turn one but briefly moved into provisional pole.

Rosenqvist's final lap was clean through the sectors that mattered, and he had been among the quickest drivers all week. Morocco had hosted a Formula One race at Ain-Diab in Casablanca in 1958, and the country had held touring car races since 2009.

What was the track like?

The Circuit Moulay El Hassan was a 2.97 km (1.85 mi) anti-clockwise layout, revealed on 17 October. It was a purpose-built motor racing track, and drivers expected it to be fast with plenty of barriers, which made a full course yellow or a safety car likely.

Piquet described it as fast and slightly wider, which he believed would make the racing closer. Heidfeld said energy management would be central to the race, and he expected a full course yellow or safety car because of the barriers. Jose Maria Lopez, who had raced there in the WTCC, called the track tricky but said there was room to overtake.

Practice was busy. Buemi set the Friday shakedown benchmark at 1 minute, 30.152 seconds, one second ahead of Rosenqvist and Vergne. In the first session di Grassi led at 1 minute, 21.923 seconds, and in the second Buemi was fastest at 1 minute, 20.599 seconds.

Practice also brought incidents. Duval stopped after five minutes, which brought out a full course yellow, and Lopez hit the turn 11 barrier and spent most of the session in the pit lane. Bird's session ended early when he lost the rear of his car and hit the turn eight barrier.

How did the result change the championship?

Buemi's win put him 22 points clear of di Grassi, while Prost moved up to third. Rosenqvist was fourth on 19 points and Bird fifth on 18. The Teams' table also shifted, with Virgin climbing to fourth.

Before the race Buemi had led on 25 points, seven ahead of di Grassi. The Marrakesh win extended that gap to 22 points, and di Grassi was four points ahead of Prost in third.

In the Teams' Championship, The e.Dams-Renault gap over Audi Sport ABT grew to 38 points, and the margin over the Audi and Mahindra pairing widened by 19 points. Audi and Mahindra were tied on the same total, with ten races left in the season.

What did the drivers say afterwards?

Buemi called both of his cars amazing and said their balance was very good. He said his team had known his car was efficient, and that he needed that efficiency after starting from a position he had not expected to be in.

Bird said scoring points in Morocco was welcome, and that standing on the podium felt like a win, although his car had not felt as well balanced as Buemi's. Rosenqvist was shocked to take his first pole and first podium in only his second Formula E event, and he said his team had made the car fast over one lap.

Vergne called the penalty extremely frustrating, because he believed he had been faster than Rosenqvist. Mahindra's team principal Dilbagh Gill said Rosenqvist would have held off Vergne. Engel, who retired, said his team had changed his battery that morning, and that his race pace had been strong. He thought a top-ten finish had been within reach before his car was affected.

e.Dams-Renault's team principal Jean-Paul Driot said the grid penalty came from a safety regulation breach the team could not control. He believed two wires had come loose when Buemi struck a kerb during qualifying.