Renault e.dams driver Sébastien Buemi says he was looking in his mirrors “the entire race” at the Monaco ePrix after a close battle for victory with title rival Lucas di Grassi.
The reigning Formula E champion started on pole position and opened up a lead in the opening stint before a safety car destroyed his advantage.
After the early pitstop prompted by the safety car, he struggled more with his second car and di Grassi appeared to have better pace, closing up to Buemi in the final laps.
The Swiss driver managed to hold di Grassi off to claim his fourth win in five races, but it was close – just three tenths between them by the finish.
“I am really happy to be winning again,” he explained. “I was quicker the first half of the race and everything was under control, so I managed to build a gap in case of a safety car.
“But Lucas was using a bit less energy than me. When the safety car came out we knew we had to try to learn from them [Abt] after what they have done in Hong Kong and Mexico by stopping very early, so that was the right call and then we knew it was going to be very difficult because to finish we would have to save quite a lot of energy.
“I managed to build a bit of a gap just to be safe but on the second stint, I was struggling to match his pace, so basically, I did the entire race looking in the mirrors. We need to understand why this was.
“In general, we changed a little bit the set-up of the second car in order to use the extra grip of the circuit. If you want the perfect car, sometimes it needs adjustments.
“I am still very happy with that result and I am looking forward to going to Paris next week. We have a good car, we have a great team.”
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