Daniel Abt soared to victory at the Mexico City ePrix to secure his maiden Formula E win for Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler.
While Mahindra Racing's Felix Rosenqvist claimed pole position for the fifth round of the 2017/18 season, Abt only managed to qualify in sixth place, being promoted to fifth on the grid through a ten-place grid penalty for Alex Lynn who originally qualified in third place.
When the lights went out for the race start, Rosenqvist had a strong start and led into the first corner followed by NIO's Oliver Turvey, who started from second place, and Sebastien Buemi while Abt jumped Antonio Felix da Costa into fourth place.
After setting multiple fastest laps, Rosenqvist slowly began to pull away from Turvey to build a gap before coming to a halt out on track on lap 14 through a reliability problem, promoting Britain's Turvey into the lead and Abt into the podium positions.
On lap 23 the pit window opened and the field switched cars for the second half of the race. With the removal of Formula E's minimum pitstop time since the Santiago ePrix, Abt and Audi showed how important speed is in the pitstop phase, jumping Buemi and Turvey to secure the net lead while Nelson Piquet Jr tried to perform the overcut strategy for Jaguar Racing.
After Piquet pitted, Abt emerged as the leader and pulled away from Turvey who was closely followed by Techeetah's Jean-Eric Vergne and Buemi.
Buemi soon cleared Vergne while Piquet followed him through but was ultimately unable to perform a late overtake on Turvey in the dying stages of the race.
Abt took the checkered flag after 47 laps of racing to secure his first career win after being disqualified from the second round of the season in Hong Kong where he also won while Turvey claimed his maiden Formula E podium. Buemi stood on the final step of the podium for Renault e.dams.
Despite having more usable energy than both Buemi and Turvey, Piquet finished in fourth, unable to find a way around the Swiss and the Briton while Vergne finished in fifth place.
Mitch Evans finished in sixth place in the second Jaguar while da Costa finished in seventh for Andretti.
Edoardo Mortara finished in eighth place for Venturi followed by Lucas di Grassi who secured his first points of the season for Audi by finishing in ninth while Alex Lynn rounded out the top ten for DS Virgin Racing.
Through this result, Vergne extended his lead in the Drivers' Championship and now holds a 12 point advantage over Rosenqvist who, despite failing to finish, holds onto second place in the standings while Techeetah extended its lead over Mahindra in the Teams' Championship due to a reliability problem for Nick Heidfeld.
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