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Barnard eases to first Monaco E-Prix pole after Rowland crashes
Taylor Barnard took pole for the Monaco E-Prix after Oliver Rowland crashed in the first corner of his fast lap in the final.
Rowland, who was carrying minor steering damage from his Semifinal run ran wide into Sainte Devote and clouted the outside wall giving NEOM McLaren driver Barnard a clear route to pole, his pedestrian time of 1m30.117 proving inconsequential.
Barnard's route to the final began with a third-place finish in the second group session behind practice pacesetter Dan Ticktum and Mitch Evans, with Robin Frijns also making it through from that session.
He beat Evans in the Quarter Finals, the Jaguar TCS Racing driver being the only to lap under 1m 27s in the Duel stage. Barnard then provided an upset by defeating star of the weekend so far Ticktum by 0.108s in the Semifinals, his 1m26.315s lap proving to be the fastest of the day so far.
Rowland, meanwhile, topped Group A ahead of Jake Dennis, Nyck de Vries and Pascal Wehlein, who left it late to get into the top four, usurping Maximilian Guenther in the process. Wehrlein soon fell to Rowland in the Quarter Finals, while he also saw off de Vries in the semis, in spite of his damage.
Behind the front row of Barnard and Rowland, Ticktum will start third, with de Vries fourth, Wehrlein will line up fifth on the grid ahead of Frijns, Dennis, and Evans. Mortara, who finished fifth in Group B will start the first race of the weekend ninth, with Guenther 10th.
David Beckmann will start 11th, ahead of Sam Bird, Stoffel Vandoorne and Nico Mueller. Antonio Felix da Costa will line up a lowly 15th, his final group stage lap only good enough for fifth at the line. He fell to eighth by the time everyone's laps were completed.
Next up will be Jean-Eric Vergne, Lucas di Grassi, and Norman Nato, while Nick Cassidy also had a poor showing in the Group Stage, failing to advance after his final lap was only good enough for eighth out of the 11 in the group at the line – he ultimately was classified 10th. Sebastien Buemi, Jake Hughes, and Zane Maloney round out the grid.
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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