Andrew Ferraro/Motorsport Images
Guenther continues fine Jeddah form to top FP3
Maximilian Guenther picked up where he left off after winning Friday’s first race of the Jeddah E-Prix by topping the final practice session of the weekend.
The session, despite being in daylight, took place in cooler but more humid conditions following overnight rain, with that rain also a potential threat for the race later on.
As with Friday night’s race, it was Taylor Barnard and Oliver Rowland who completed the top-three, albeit with second and third reversed. All three were covered by less than a tenth of a second, with DS Penske’s Guenther’s pacesetting time of 1m 15.044 – coming with four minutes of the 40 minute session remaining – just 0.072s quicker than NEOM McLaren’s Barnard, with Nissan driver Rowland just another 0.013s back.
TAG Heuer Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa and Pascal Wehrlein completed the top-five, ahead of Jaguar TCS Racing’s Mitch Evans, while Sam Bird was seventh in the second McLaren ahead of Norman Nato in the other factory Nissan, ensuring that the Japanese brand was the only manufacturer with four cars in the top-10.
Dan Ticktum and Nyck de Vries completed the top-10 for Cupra Kiro and Mahindra respectively, ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne, and Edoardo Mortara, while Stoffel Vandoorne was the only Maserati driver to complete a timed lap in 13th. His teammate Jake Hughes came to a stop early in the session, necessitating a full reset of his car. He was able to get his car restarted and back to the pits, but only reemerged for a lap towards the end of the session, albeit not on full power.
Nico Mueller was the highest of the Andretti drivers in 14th, the American team’s struggles continuing for another day. He finished ahead of Cupra Kiro’s David Beckmann and the Envision Racing pair of Sebastien Buemi, and Robin Frijns, with the factory Jaguar of Nick Cassidy a lowly 18th.
Lola Yamaha Abt driver Lucas di Grassi, who ended up disqualified from Friday night’s race after an overuse of energy, finished 19th, with Jake Dennis in the other Andretti and Zane Maloney in the second Lola last of those that set a meaningful time.
Qualifying for the second Jeddah E-Prix race takes place at 7:20 ET.
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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