DS Virgin Racing’s Sam Bird claimed an early victory on Saturday, when a late surge saw him beat off stiff competition to top the first FanBoost leaderboard of the 2015-16 FIA Formula E season.

The British driver amassed over a quarter of the vote with 29%, leapfrogging the NEXTEV pairing of Nelson Piquet Jr and Oliver Turvey and pushing Team Aguri’s Antonio Felix da Costa into fourth place.

As a result, Bird receives an extra 100kJ of energy that can be used in one go during a power window between 180kW and 200kW, after swapping cars. 

This season, for the first time, fans were able to vote via Twitter and Instagram, as well as via the official Formula E website and app. This is only the second time that the team has been awarded FanBoost, after Sam was successful in Long Beach last season.