Miscalculation leaves Buemi ‘speechless’ after battery goes flat in Mexico City

Sebastien Buemi was left “speechless” after the Nissan e.dams team’s dramatic energy loss in the Mexican ABB FIA Formula E race, which he put down to a strategy software miscalculation.

Buemi and his Nissan teammate Oliver Rowland were running fourth and third at the start of the final lap of Saturday’s race, just behind Pascal Wehrlein and eventual race winner Lucas di Grassi.

But both Nissan drivers hit 0% energy just after the start of the final tour and ended up 20th and 21st overall, with Rowland, who had run second for most of the race, ahead.

When asked what had happened after the race, Swiss driver Buemi said that the team “didn’t calculate the amount of laps right, basically”.

“We underestimated by one lap so we ran out of energy earlier,” he continued.

“It’s a software issue on the strategy software we have.

“It basically tells you how many laps you need to do and then you use the energy according to that. So we’ve done a mistake there and paid a big price.

“I’m a bit speechless, to be honest. I don’t want to find any excuse or whatever, it’s just a shame because to do an extra lap, if you start from the beginning if you have it right, it’s peanuts [in terms of energy] because we are doing so many laps.

“It’s a short lap, to do an extra lap really costs nothing, maybe a tenth per lap.”