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Oliver Rowland beats Vergne to his first FE pole positon at Sanya

Nissan e.dams driver Oliver Rowland will start on pole position for ABB FIA Formula E's first race at Sanya ahead of reigning champion Jean-Eric Vergne

Rowland and DS Techeetah's Vergne both made it through to the superpole session from the third group qualifying, along with practice pacesetter Sebastien Buemi and Alexander Sims.

On his superpole lap Rowland made the difference to Vergne in the second sector, before wrestling his car through the fast Turn 10 right-hander and nearly clipping the wall on the exit.

He held on to set a best time of 1m07.945s, which was 0.1s faster than Vergne, who was delighted to take his first row start since the second round of the season in Marrakech.

Buemi, who was fastst in his qualifying group, had an incident that looked very similar to a crash he had in the second practice session, going nose first into the Turn 3 barrier, at the corner where the attack mode activation is located.

That ruined his superpole attempt and placed him fifth provisionally, until he was disqualified from superpole for an unspecified brake system infringement.

Buemi will start the Sanya E-Prix from the pitlane.

Sims could only qualify sixth after he could not take part due to a suspected gear selection issue.

He was able to reverse away and ended up over 25 seconds off the pace in superpole, but will start ahead of Sims because he completed the lap.

Antonio Felix da Costa and Daniel Abt were the other superpole runners, and they ended up third and fourth, with da Costa losing time with a wild slide at the final corner on his flying lap.

Andre Lotterer will start seventh for Techeetah, ahead of Jerome d'Ambrosio, who ended up as the second highest group one runner behind da Costa for Mahindra Racing.

Pascal Wehrlein qualified ninth behind his Mahindra team-mate, with Lucas di Grassi rounding out the top 10 for Audi after failing to make it out of group one.

Hong Kong winner - and group one runner - Edoardo Mortara qualified 11th, just ahead of Robin Frijns (Envision Virgin Racing) and HWA driver Stoffel Vandoorne.

Jose Maria Lopez and a Felipe Massa will start 14th and 15th.

Current championship leader Sam Bird will start in 16th after he ended up as the slowest runner in group one, having been the first driver to take to the track in that segment.

Tom Dillmann, Felipe Nasr and Oliver Turvey will line up in positions 17th-19th.

Jaguar duo Mitch Evans and Nelson Piquet Jr will start 20th and 22nd, split by HWA's Gary Paffett, who went very deep at the Turn 8 hairpin and lost significant time in group four.

Evans struck the wall on the inside of the fast right of Turn 5, tearing off a strip of advertising branding as he did so, which got stuck to the right-hand side of his car and trailed behind as he completed his group two lap.

Piquet was a second adrift of the top spot at the end of sector one on his 250kW run in group four and qualified last after losing more time at Turn 8.

Starting grid

Pos Driver Team Gap
1 Oliver Rowland e.dams 1m07.945s
2 Jean-Eric Vergne DS Techeetah 0.100s
3 Antonio Felix da Costa BMW 0.177s
4 Daniel Abt Audi 0.386s
5 Alexander Sims BMW -
6 Sebastien Buemi e.dams -0.275
7 Andre Lotterer DS Techeetah 0.426s
8 Jerome d'Ambrosio Mahindra 0.427s
9 Pascal Wehrlein Mahindra 0.510s
10 Lucas di Grassi Audi 0.523s
11 Edoardo Mortara Venturi 0.559s
12 Robin Frijns Virgin 0.601s
13 Stoffel Vandoorne HWA 0.615s
14 Jose Maria Lopez Dragon 0.623s
15 Felipe Massa Venturi 0.640s
16 Sam Bird Virgin 0.696s
17 Tom Dillmann NIO 0.855s
18 Felipe Nasr Dragon 0.878s
19 Oliver Turvey NIO 0.978s
20 Mitch Evans Jaguar 1.010s
21 Gary Paffett HWA 1.127s
22 Nelson Piquet Jr. Jaguar 1.454s

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