Vergne ends opening day of second Formula E test on top

The Techeetah driver was the first man to dip into the 1m29s, clocking the fastest lap of 1m29.640s with around an hour remaining, but just falling short of his 1m29.634s benchmark from last month.

Vergne was followed by DS Virgin's Sam Bird, the best of the drivers who had been travelling back from the WEC 6 Hours of Mexico last weekend, with a best time 0.284s off the pace.

Renault's Nicolas Prost slotted himself in third and was the only other driver to breach the 90-second barrier, 0.330s back from countryman Vergne.

That pushed Dragon's Jerome D'Ambrosio to fourth, with reigning champion Sebastien Buemi completing the top five, just over half a second slower than Vergne.

The Swiss driver missed the morning session entirely, having travelled back from Mexico. Venturi duo Stephane Sarrazin and Maro Engel were also absent for the morning.

Behind, Daniel Abt in the lead Abt Schaeffler Audi Sport car ended sixth, with Jaguar's Adam Carroll recording the team's best testing time yet in seventh. The British marque's new signing Mitch Evans ended the day in 14th.

DS Virgin's Jose Maria Lopez was eighth fastest having topping the one-hour morning session, which began in damp conditinos, fresh from provisionally winning his third WTCC title in Japan.

The top 10 was completed by Mahindra's Nick Heidfeld and Techeetah's Ma Qing Hua.

In all there were nine red flag stoppages during the day, one of which was caused by a crash for Andretti's Antonio Felix da Costa.

The second Andretti car of Robin Frijns and Dragon's Loic Duval were also responsible for delays.

Day 1 times (afternoon):

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'29.640
2	Sam Bird	DS-Virgin	1'29.924	0.284
3	Nicolas Prost	Renault	1'29.970	0.330
4	Jerome d'Ambrosio	Dragon	1'30.013	0.373
5	Sebastien Buemi	Renault	1'30.159	0.519
6	Daniel Abt	ABT Schaeffler	1'30.200	0.560
7	Adam Carroll	Jaguar	1'30.713	1.073
8	Jose Maria Lopez	DS-Virgin	1'30.852	1.212
9	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra	1'30.885	1.245
10	Ma Qing Hua	Techeetah	1'31.181	1.541
11	Lucas di Grassi	ABT Schaeffler	1'31.231	1.591
12	Stephane Sarrazin	Venturi	1'31.538	1.898
13	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti	1'31.559	1.919
14	Mitch Evans	Jaguar	1'31.699	2.059
15	Maro Engel	Venturi	1'32.371	2.731
16	Nelson Piquet Jr.	NEXTEV TCR	1'32.493	2.853
17	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra	1'32.694	3.054
18	Loic Duval	Dragon	1'32.786	3.146
19	Oliver Turvey	NEXTEV TCR	1'33.183	3.543
20	Robin Frijns	Andretti	1'33.236	3.596