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Sam Bird leads Virgin Racing's Robin Frijns en route to his first win for Jaguar

A great race-long battle under the lights between Jaguar’s Sam Bird and Virgin Racing’s Robin Frijns for the victory at round two of the 2020-21 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. The race was ended prematurely by a late red flag, as Bird beat Frijns and Jean-Éric Vergne battled to third place only to lose it to team-mate António Félix da Costa after the race .

Frijns made a great start from pole as Bird pipped second place qualifier Sette Câmara to clinch second to slide in behind the leader throughout the opening laps as race one winner Nyck de Vries struggled down in 18th.

With just over 30 minutes remaining Frijns was the first driver to activate Attack Mode, the on track detour that gives 35kw of additional power for four minutes, thus handing the lead to Bird. The English Jaguar driver followed suit two laps later, triggering his first of two mandatory Attack Mode phases as Frijns retook the lead and Bird found himself in third behind Câmara.

Bird soon found his way around Câmara to set about Frijns as the race entered its second half as DS TECHEETAH’s Jean-Éric Vergne capped a strong first half of the race by snatching third, followed by team-mate and reigning champion da Costa.

A full course yellow flag period slowed the field and the action got underway once more with just over 21 minutes left on the clock and Bird surged into the lead ahead of Frijns before the Dutch driver, running with Attack Mode, re-passed to lead once more with the two DS TECHEETAH cars edging closer to make it a four-way scrap for the win.

Bird once again found himself in the lead as Vergne and da Costa came perilously close to taking each other out, making contact in the battle for third – the intra-team battle allowing the following train of cars headed by Câmara to get a look in for a podium.

Entering the final 10 minutes the two DS TECHEETAHs were right with second place man Frijns as a full course yellow triggered by Sébastien Buemi stopping on circuit turned into a safety car as several cars went off at turn 13, showering the circuit with debris. 

The emergence of a safety car for the third time over the weekend hinted at a frantic scramble for the win, but sadly, the dramatic finish never came and the race was red flagged with Bird leading, handing the British driver his first win with new employers Jaguar ahead of Frijns with a hard charging Vergne rounding out the podium in third.

Post-race, Vergne was stripped of his podium having been found to have skipped an attack mode phase, this promoting team-mate da Costa to the final podium place.

Diriyah E-Prix round two results

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1 Sam BIRD - JAGUAR RACING

2 Robin FRIJNS - ENVISION VIRGIN RACING

3 António Félix DA COSTA - DS TECHEETAH