Simon Galloway/Motorsport Images
Porsche's da Costa fastest in opening Mexico City practice
Antonio Felix da Costa topped opening practice for the Mexico City E-Prix, leading the Nissan-powered duo of Taylor Barnard and Oliver Rowland.
The session took place in mostly dry conditions, although there were a few reports of spots of rain during the 40-minutes, but Formula E’s new GEN3 Evo car ensured the official lap record at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was comfortably broken, with da Costa’s best lap of 1m10.855s – the race lap record being set by Jake Dennis last year with a 1m14.195s.
Second was NEOM McLaren driver Barnard, just 0.091s behind da Costa, with Rowland in the works Nissan a further 0.031s back, both drivers having made a late surge up the timesheets as the checkered flag came out.
Da Costa completed his fastest lap with the full complement of 350 kW of power, while his TAG Heuer Porsche teammate Pascal Wehrlein – the polesitter and winner of last year’s Mexico City E-Prix – was the highest-placed runner to lap with only 300 kW. He completed his best time on full power, however.
Sao Paulo E-Prix winner Mitch Evans was fifth for Jaguar TCS Racing, having gone quickest halfway through the session, with Lucas di Grassi sixth for Lola Yamaha Abt having spent a period in the second half of the session atop of the timesheets after becoming the first driver to break the 1m11s barrier.
Norman Nato ensured both factory Nissans ended the day in the top 10, finishing seventh, 0.486s adrift of his teammate. Next up was Envision Racing’s Sebastein Buemi and the Mahindra Racing pair of Edoardo Mortara and Nyck de Vries, with Stoffel Vandoorne splitting both in 10th.
Behind 12th-placed Dan Ticktum of Burpa Kiro, Nico Mueller led Andretti teammate Dennis in 13th, with Nick Cassidy a lowly 15th in the second factory Jaguar. Sam Bird was another driver with a big gap to his teammate, the McLaren man ending the session 16th, ahead of the Stellantis-powered trio of Jean-Eric Vergne (DS Penske), Jake Hughes (Maserati MSG Racing), and Maximilian Guenther.
Robin Frijns (Envision), David Beckmann (Kiro) – who had a brush with the wall at the Peraltada on his final lap – and Zane Maloney in the second Lola Yamaha Abt completed the field, Maloney not completing a lap on full power.
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
Read Dominik Wilde's articles
Latest News
Comments
Comments are disabled until you accept Social Networking Cookies. Update cookie preferences
If the dialog doesn't appear, ad-blockers are often the cause; try disabling yours or see our Social Features Support.