Nick Cassidy of Envision Virgin Racing secured the second pole position of his rookie season in the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, setting the benchmark in qualifying ahead for Saturday afternoon’s ABB New York City E-Prix. The New Zealander bested Jean-Eric Vergne (DS Techeetah) by 0.161s, with Alex Lynn (Mahindra Racing) taking third.

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Cassidy blew the doors off the rest in the Super Pole shootout with a lap of 1m09.338s on the 14-turn, 1.442-mile/2.32km Brooklyn street circuit. Briton Lynn wound up third following Vergne’s late flier. The Frenchman left nothing on the table but despite a lively-looking effort, the double Formula E champion couldn’t quite steal the initiative and seal a 13th pole position.

BMW i Andretti Motorsport’s Maximilian Guenther took fourth ahead of Sebastien Buemi (Nissan e.dams), who has three pole positions from the first six E-Prix in New York City. He topped Group Qualifying by 0.068s from Vergne but a poor first sector left him fifth and more than three-tenths shy of Cassidy.

TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein will be disappointed with the lap he managed to string together in the top-six shootout. The German looked busy behind the wheel but slipped some 0.4 seconds down on Cassidy’s pole time.

Point leader Edoardo Mortara (ROKiT Venturi Racing) struggled in Group 1 of Group Qualifying, setting the slowest time of those first six runners as he contended with just 200kW of power available to him after problems with a switch in the cockpit. “It wasn’t the qualifying we were looking for,” said the Swiss-Italian. “We had a problem with the scenario switch and it’s incredibly frustrating and a bit of bad timing.”

There was more drama for Sam Bird (Jaguar Racing), too, following his FP1 shunt and the mad dash made by his team to prep the car in time for qualifying — eventually beating the parc ferme clock by just six seconds following a heroic rebuild effort.

Bird found himself in contact with Nissan e.dams’ Oliver Rowland with the former on his cooldown lap. Both ended up in the run off and pointing in the wrong direction with Bird managing just 20th to Rowland’s eighth.

UP NEXT: The first of the weekend’s two ABB New York City E-Prix races starts at 4:30 p.m. ET, and airs live on CBSSN starting at 4 p.m.