Buemi used 200 kilowatts of power to set the fastest lap of the first practice session, held in cold and cloudy weather conditions, at 1 minute and 2.841 seconds, followed by di Grassi, Sarrazin, Bird, Mike Conway of Venturi, Loïc Duval for Dragon, Daniel Abt of Audi Sport ABT, the Mahindras of Bruno Senna and Nick Heidfeld, and NextEV's Nelson Piquet Jr.. During the session, where several drivers ventured off the circuit leaving turns one and eight, the session was red-flagged halfway through for d'Ambrosio who stopped on the approach to turn one with a battery management system failure and required extraction from the track.