The Briton started in 10th for the inaugural Formula E race in Brazil because of serving a five-place grid penalty for a collision with Jaguar team-mate Mitch Evans in Hyderabad.
A qualifying accident in Cape Town which resulted in him being unable to begin the race meant he was unable to serve the penalty there.
Chicken made regular progress within the early phases of the Sao Paulo race and jumped into third place with 5 laps remaining, with simply the Jaguar-powered vehicles of Evans and Envision’s Nick Cassidy forward.
Regardless of closing up dramatically on the main pair and having extra vitality than both Evans or Cassidy, Bird was unable to find a way through and admitted that his incident in India meant he was cautious of creating a transfer that might have resulted in a collision.
“I feel we timed every part fairly nicely, used vitality in the beginning to get previous individuals I felt like I wanted to, that might be a little bit of a sticky patch if I obtained caught behind them,” he stated.
“After which went with the lead group. These two [Evans and Cassidy] boxed tremendous good on the finish and I needed to as nicely, after what occurred in India there was completely no level sticking my nostril someplace the place it might have actually affected staff Jaguar’s factors.”
Podium: Race winner Mitch Evans, Jaguar Racing, second place Sam Chicken, Jaguar Racing
Photograph by: Andreas Beil
Chicken said that the character of the Sao Paulo monitor, which included lengthy straights not generally utilized in Formulation E circuit configurations, allowed him to save lots of vitality within the slipstream of others which was the important thing to his second podium of the 12 months.
“I can’t take any credit score as a result of it’s utterly the character of the circuit,” he stated.
“It’s a sport of chess, and I felt like I performed it fairly nicely. I used to be down on vitality in the beginning of the race however then simply settled in and used my instruments appropriately and obtained that vitality again.
“And once I wanted to make a transfer forwards, I did. Sadly, the goal was such on the finish it could have been tremendous dangerous to make a transfer and it simply wasn’t value it.”