Jean-Eric Vergne scored a historic Formula E win at the inaugural Santiago ePrix, being the first part of a 1-2 finish for Techeetah.
Vergne started on pole position for the Chinese outfit with Renault e.dams' Sebastien Buemi being his nearest challenger, also starting on the front row of the grid.
While Vergne had a strong start, Buemi lost two positions from the get-go, being passed by Nelson Piquet Jr and Andre Lotterer immediately. For the first half of the race, Piquet looked threatening to Vergne for Jaguar Racing before being passed by Lotterer on lap 19, dropping him to third.
After Formula E's mandatory car change mid-race, which, for the first time in the series' history, did not have a minimum pitstop time, the Techeetah pair of Vergne and Lotterer remained in first and second.
If Techeetah could hold onto first and second until the chequered flag had waved, it would prove to be a historic occasion in the sport, marking the first 1-2 finish in the all-electric championship's short history.
Technical issues threatened Techeetah's potential 1-2 finish, with radio problems preventing communication between both the driver and the team in the closing stages of the race.
Despite facing a number of threatening attacks from Lotterer, one of which saw the German driver mount the rear-end of the Frenchman's car, Vergne held onto first, leading home a 1-2.
Buemi recovered from a poor start to finish in third place for Renault e.dams while Felix Rosenqvist narrowly missed out on a podium finish for Mahindra Racing, despite starting down in 14th place, as he went on to finish in fourth.
Sam Bird finished in fifth for DS Virgin Racing followed by Piquet, who crossed the line in sixth place after making a mistake when challenging Buemi for the final podium position in the closing stages of the race.
Mitch Evans put in an impressive performance in the second Jaguar Racing machine to finish in seventh place after qualifying in 20th, while Jerome D'Ambrosio finished in eighth to score his first points finish of Season Four for Dragon Racing.
Antonio Felix da Costa claimed ninth place for Andretti while Nico Prost rounded out the top ten in the second Renault e.dams.
It was another difficult weekend for Audi and more specifically, Lucas di Grassi, with neither him nor Daniel Abt finishing the race in Chile, with technical problems forcing both of the drivers to retire. This drops Audi to eighth place in the Teams' Standings having only scored 12 points from four races while di Grassi sits at the bottom of the Drivers' Championship in last place and with zero points.
Joining di Grassi and Abt in retirement was Alex Lynn, Nick Heidfeld, Jose Maria Lopez and Maro Engel, with the final three suffering terminal damage in the opening lap of the race following a collision which forced the safety car to be deployed.
Through a second Formula E win, Vergne has taken the lead in the Drivers' Championship from Rosenqvist having scored 71 points as opposed to the Swedish racer's 66 points in the past four races, while Techeetah has taken the lead in the Team's Championship from Mahindra.
