History repeated itself with a brand new race series on the streets of Long Beach in the names of Piquet, Prost, and Senna. The Long Beach ePrix took place on April 4th, where Nelson Piquet, Jr. won his first Formula E race nearly 35 years to the day after his father won his first Formula 1 race at the 1980 United States Grand Prix West (March 30). Soaked with champagne from the podium ceremony, he told a crowd in the media room that it was one of the most emotional wins of his career.
Piquet threatened to open his winner’s bank account a few weeks ago at the Miami ePrix, but it was ironically on a circuit that didn’t require maximise energy saving, that the ‘energy-sensitive’ Piquet dominated the Formula E field – despite multiple safety car interruptions. Piquet was lucky not to run out of energy when he misinterpreted radio instructions from his crew at China Racing.
“The team told me more coast, but I understood it as NO coast!”, said Piquet.
The race win was in Piquet’s sights from the beginning - a clever inside move on pole-sitter Daniel Abt at the first corner allowed him to maintain a lead, aside from pit stops, for the remainder of the race. The day’s qualifying times of the second through 14th positions were all within .9 seconds of each other, which meant claiming the lead at the tricky chicane was a stellar move on Piquet’s part. That chicane managed to scatter the rest of the pack as Sam Bird and Sebastian Buemi collided, causing Bird to return to the pits to change cars.
Californian Scott Speed, on the fourth lap at his home track, flew into the wall at Turn 2 which forced the safety car out and disappointed many of the 23,000 spectators in this California ePrix. Later, Charles Pic took a dive on F1 veteran Jarno Trulli at the hairpin which gave us another chance to stare at the gorgeous BMW i8 safety car. At 42 minutes in to the ePrix, Nicolas Prost and Bruno Senna battled for 6th position before Senna was able to move forward. This brief but historic moment in open-wheel racing was a coup for the new Formula E series, and gave us something to think about ahead of the next stop on the calendar: Monaco.
Long Beach Race