Bird was running 4th when he lost control of his Jaguar maker through the high-speed left sweep of Turn 6 and bounced off the barrier.
After pulling up on the racing line, Bird was struck initially by Envision Racing’s Buemi and after that suffered a 2nd effect with the Maserati of Edoardo Mortara.
All 3 drivers were gotten rid of in the mishap, which likewise declared Antonio Felix da Costa (Porsche), Lucas di Grassi (Mahindra) and Robin Frijns (Abt Cupra).
All drivers had the ability to extract themselves and were unhurt in the event, which resulted in a prolonged warning, with groups in a race versus time to build up brand-new chassis for Sunday’s 2nd race.
“There’s a lot of bumps to this corner and too many drains that are raised up,” said Bird, who had actually led Saturday’s race at first – a contest that was won by his Jaguar team-mate Mitch Evans.
“I struck a drain that was raised up at the incorrect angle and it sent me into the wall.
“Scary crash. I’m happy everybody included was okay.
“They require to change the drains pipes and attend to the smoothness of that area, it’s too fast to have drains pipes and bumps like that, which can send you into a wall at a minute’s notification. For me it’s excessive.
“You can get round there, and the majority of people get round there, however it simply takes one small little mistake – it’s not even actually a mistake.
“I don’t think they can change it ahead of tomorrow, but certainly for next year they need to think hard about completely redoing that area, really laying a nice smooth surface up the hill because it’s too hit and miss right now.”
The very same area had actually already declared the Andretti Autosport maker of Andre Lotterer previously in the race, an occurrence that needed a safety car, while McLaren’s Jake Hughes was required to remain the race after crashing at the very same area in certifying.
Andre Lotterer, Andretti Autosport, Sebastien Buemi, Envision Racing
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Buemi was left upset by the event having actually raised that area of track as a problem in 2015 when Formula E utilized the relatively slower Gen2 devices rather than the new-for-2023 Gen3 vehicles.
“It was just a matter of time in my opinion, and I raised the point already last year,” said Buemi, who included there was no radio message or yellow flags cautioning him of the crash ahead.
“A little driver mistake on the leading there like Sam did, if you’re at the incorrect location at the incorrect time you have no possibility.
“Those cars are really powerful now and not much grip and when something like that happens it’s difficult to avoid.”
Andretti’s Jake Dennis, who was the very first car following Bird when he lost control and was simply able to prevent the spinning Jaguar, thinks that the corner needs to stay a difficulty for drivers.
“It just needs to be a bit smoother – I think the corner’s great, it’s an awesome corner to drive and it gives us good fun, but I don’t want to take that away,” said Dennis, who lost the champion lead after ending up 4th.
“It just needs to be a bit smoother, it’s just one bump. We’re going so fast in that section you can’t recover, and you hit the wall.”
An FIA representative included: “We don’t see any need to execute any modifications to the track for tomorrow.
“As per process, we will review the track layout ahead of next year’s event based on potential new learnings and feedback from drivers.”
