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Barnard becomes Formula E's youngest pole winner for Jeddah race 2
Taylor Barnard became the youngest polesitter in Formula E history, defeating Oliver Rowland in the final of the qualifying Duels for the second race of the Jeddah E-Prix.
The NEOM McLaren driver – aged just 20 years and 259 days – was in fine form throughout qualifying, setting three laps faster than anyone else throughout the Duels.
In the Duels final, Rowland held the upper-hand early on but got out of shape at the Turn 8-9-10-11 "bus stop" complex, allowing Barnard to claw back two tenths. That progress continued, with Barnard eventually going 0.363s quicker than the Nissan driver.
It was a similar story in Barnard's opening Duel, with Antonio Felix da Costa just under a tenth up in the first sector until Barnard recovered to defeat the TAG Heuer Porsche man by 0.227s. He then comprehensively beat Jake Hughes, his McLaren predecessor who's now at Maserati MSG Racing, by 0.431s in his semifinal.
Rowland, meanwhile, beat Friday polesitter and race winner by 0.280s in his first Duel, before disposing of Stoffel Vandoorne in a closely fought semifinal.
Ahead of the Duels, Barnard also topped the second part of the Group stage ahead of Hughes, Edoardo Mortara and da Costa, while Rowland finished second in the first group, behind Vandoorne but ahead of Guenther and Sam Bird.
The first group session featured a number of high-profile exits, with reigning champion Pascal Wehrlien knocked out by Bird’s final flying lap. The Cupra Kiro customer Porsches of Dan Ticktum and David Beckmann then also went faster than the factory driver, pushing him further down the order. Da Costa was the only Porsche-powered car to advance, with Jake Dennis in the customer Andretti not moving on from Group A and his teammate Nico Mueller finishing bottom of Group B.
Jaguar TCS Racing’s Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy also failed to advance from Group A, while the second group -- the customer Jaguars of Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns and Sebastien Buemi -- failed to advance, meaning that for the second time this season, not one Jaguar took part in the Duels. Nyck de Vries didn’t advance from Group B either, his final push lap being only good enough to consolidate fifth.
Behind the all-British front row, Maserati locked out the second row of the grid with Vandoorne third ahead of Hughes, but Vandoorne’s position could be under threat due to an investigation for a technical infringement.
Da Costa will line up fifth, ahead of Mortara, with Guenther and Bird occupying the fourth row of the grid. de Vries and Ticktum will occupy the final two spots in the top 10, ahead of Norman Nato in 11th, Beckmann in 12th, and Jean-Eric Vergne in 13th.
Wehrlein will start Saturday night's race in 14th, ahead of Frijns, Evans, di Grassi and Cassidy, with Buemi, Dennis, Zane Maloney and Mueller – who has been handed a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision in Friday’s race – completing the grid.
The second race of the Jeddah E-Prix will start at 12:05pm ET on Saturday.
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?
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