Vergne Grabs Pole in Santiago for Techeetah

Jean-Eric Vergne will start the inaugural Santiago E-Prix from pole position after taking the top spot in Super Pole on Saturday afternoon.

The Techeetah driver claimed the sixth pole position of his ABB FIA Formula E Championship career after setting a lap time of 1:19.161 in the Chilean capital.

His pole position was confirmed when his teammate Andre Lotterer, who had been quickest in his group qualifying session, crashed at the beginning of his flying lap.

In his best Formula E qualifying performance so far, Lotterer completed his lap with a broken front wing but will still start from third after Lucas di Grassi’s ten-place grid drop is applied.

Renault e.dams driver Sebastien Buemi will join Vergne on the front row after setting a time 0.194 seconds off the polesitter.

Sam Bird crashed his DS Virgin DSV-03 in the shootout when he carried too much speed into Turn 6.

The Hong Kong E-Prix Race 1 winner rear-ended his car into the tech-pro barrier, necessitating a brief red flag period, and will start fourth.

While di Grassi was the fifth driver in the Super Pole session, his grid penalty pushes him back to 13th on the grid.

Nelson Piquet Jr. just missed out on making it in to Super Pole and starts fifth ahead of Alex Lynn, Oliver Turvey, Nico Prost and Jose Maria Lopez.

Daniel Abt completes the top ten in his Audi e-tron FE04, meanwhile.

An increase in track temperatures from practice to qualifying appeared to affect grip levels significantly with many drivers making contact with the tire barriers or having near-misses as a result.

Championship leader Felix Rosenqvist completed a flamboyant lap but was unable to break through into Super Pole and starts in 14th position immediately ahead of his Mahindra Racing teammate Nick Heidfeld.

Edoardo Mortara looked certain to make it into Super Pole but locked-up his left-front wheel going into the hairpin and lost at least a second, and so he will start from 17th.

NIO Formula E Team’s Luca Filippi and Panasonic Jaguar Racing’s Mitch Evans both locked their brakes and will start from 19th and 20th, respectively.

The race is scheduled to get underway at 4 p.m. local time this afternoon.

RESULTS: Qualifying