Formula E: Bird fastest before rain at Donington

Sam Bird topped the first day of the final pre-season Formula E test at Donington Park, as rain prevented any late improvements.

The track was dry for the start of testing at midday, and though there were spots of rain through the mid-day break and early stages of the afternoon the teams had a decent window of dry running.

Virgin DS Racing driver Bird made the most of it to set a 1m30.451s with an hour and a half remaining in his DSV-01. That was 0.3s better than Lucas di Grassi managed in the newly liveried Abt Audi Sport machine, with those two the only to set competitive times at the 200kW qualifying limit.

Dragon Racing's still-to-be confirmed driver Loic Duval and Venturi's Jacques Villeneuve were more than a second away from Bird's best in third and fourth but were equally well clear of their respective teammates Jerome d'Ambrosio and Stephane Sarrazin.

The day's heaviest rainfall came shortly after Bird posted his benchmark, which restricted teams to wet-weather runs and system checks.

It was a largely quiet day, though there were two incidents of note. The first came when Villenueve beached his VM200-FE-01 in the gravel at the Melbourne hairpin in the wet, and the second when d'Ambrosio did the same at the Old Hairpin after the checkered flag had been shown.

Andretti Autosport's confidence that its problems from last week were solved proved misplaced, as Simona de Silvestro and Robin Frijns were consigned to the team's garage for the duration of the day.

There were also no runs for the Trulli team for the fifth day of testing in a row, though its troubled Motomatica JT-01 was fired up in the workshop.

Originally on Autosport.com