The circuit was coated in dust at the start of the day and as track conditions and temperatures improved the second session proved comfortably quicker.

Lucas di Grassi, Sam Bird, Mitch Evans and then Alex Lynn had spells atop the times after early full-power runs, with Lynn lapping 0.8s faster than Bird’s FP1 benchmark.

That remained the fastest time until Vergne popped up late on with a 1m18.662s to outpace Lynn by 0.030s.

Any chance of late improvements were scuppered when Nico Prost plunged into the barrier exiting Turn 9.

The Renault e.dams driver ran wide into the 90-degree left-hander and nosed his Z.E.17 into the wall, bringing out the red flag and ending the session early.

That confirmed Vergne as quickest, ahead of Lynn, Evans, Nick Heidfeld and championship leader Felix Rosenqvist.

Reigning champion Lucas di Grassi, without a point to his name and heading into qualifying with a 10-place grid penalty, was only 10th-fastest in FP2.

Mahindra’s Rosenqvist was one of several drivers to visit the escape road at Turn 3 during a messy opening session, as the challenging Santiago track caught out many.

Rosenqvist and Nelson Piquet Jr both headed down it twice, with Luca Filippi and Jerome d’Ambrosio also taking a trip in the wrong direction, but all of them kept it out of the barriers.

Sebastien Buemi did not, losing the rear of his Renault on the exit of a corner and slapping the wall, damaging the right-rear.

A bigger incident for Maro Engel brought the opening session to a premature end in similar circumstances to Prost’s stoppage-inducing FP2 shunt.

Engel ran deep into Turn 3 and nosed his Venturi quite heavily in the wall.

FP2 results:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'18.662
2	Alex Lynn	Virgin Racing	1'18.692	0.030
3	Mitch Evans	Jaguar Racing	1'18.872	0.210
4	Nick Heidfeld	Mahindra Racing	1'18.887	0.225
5	Felix Rosenqvist	Mahindra Racing	1'18.962	0.300
6	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	1'19.227	0.565
7	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi	1'19.240	0.578
8	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	1'19.264	0.602
9	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	1'19.274	0.612
10	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	1'19.320	0.658
11	Oliver Turvey	NIO Formula E Team	1'19.364	0.702
12	Jose Maria Lopez	Dragon Racing	1'19.414	0.752
13	Luca Filippi	NIO Formula E Team	1'19.671	1.009
14	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Dragon Racing	1'19.714	1.052
15	Antonio Felix da Costa	Andretti Autosport	1'19.803	1.141
16	Andre Lotterer	Techeetah	1'20.039	1.377
17	Nelson Piquet Jr.	Jaguar Racing	1'20.051	1.389
18	Maro Engel	Venturi	1'20.143	1.481
19	Tom Blomqvist	Andretti Autosport	1'20.298	1.636
20	Nicolas Prost	DAMS	1'20.301	1.639