Simon Galloway/Getty Images
Wehrlein quickest in Sunday Tokyo E-Prix practice
Pascal Wehrlein was quickest in Sunday’s practice at the Tokyo E-Prix, marking a stark turnaround from his Saturday performance.
The reigning champion had a largely anonymous showing on Saturday, starting sixth on the grid set by FP2 times, then fading to 13th in the race, but led the field on Sunday morning – in a session that was equally different to Saturday, taking place in hot and dry conditions rather than the torrential rain of Saturday – with a best time of 1m12.011.
Norman Nato kept Nissan near the top once again, going second quickest, 0.146s adrift of the TAG Heuer Porsche driver at the top, while Jake Hughes was third-quickest for Maserati MSG Racing, a further 0.169s back.
Jean-Eric Vernge was fourth for DS Penske, ahead of Dan Ticktum, who matched his season-best race result from Saturday to go fifth.
Taylor Barnard was sixth for NEOM McLaren, ahead of Antonio Felix da Costa and Edoardo Mortara who dropped out of podium contention late in Saturday’s race after a software issue prevented him from fully utilizing Attack Mode in his Mahindra.
Last year’s Tokyo E_prix winner Maximilian Guenther was ninth in the second DS Penske, with Mitch Evans completing the top-10 for Jaguar TSC Racing.
Jake Dennis, looking to rebound after being disqualified from Saturday’s race, narrowly missed out on the top-10, his best lap being just 0.003s off Evans’, while Nyck de Vries went 12th quickest in the second Mahindra.
Robin Frijns clocked the 13th quickest time, putting him ahead of Zane Maloney and Sam Bird, with Lucas di Grassi – who logged the highest number of laps with 20 – and Saturday race winner Stoffel Vandoorne next up.
Nico Mueller was 18th, ahead of Nick Cassidy, Sebastien Buemi, and David Beckmann, with championship leader Oliver Rowland completing the field.
The Nissan driver set the pace early on, but spent the majority of the session focusing on 300kW laps rather than chasing pace with the full 350kW and four-wheel-drive – in fact, he was the only driver in the field to not complete a lap on 350kW. A late lap from him was aborted after he ran too deep into Turn 15 and slid into the run-off area.
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.
