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Da Costa stays on top in second Shanghai E-Prix practice
Antonio Felix da Costa remained the pacesetter at the Shanghai E-Prix, going quickest in the second practice session of the weekend on Saturday morning.
The TAG Heuer Porsche driver set a best time of 1m08.749s to head a tight session where the entire grid was split by just 0.696s. Taylor Barnard was second quickest for NEOM McLaren, just 0.042s adrift of da Costa, with Nyck de Vries once again at the sharp end for Mahindra, a further 0.022s back.
Maximilian Guenther was fourth for DS Penske, ensuring four different powertrains were in the top four, while Jake Hughes, driving with the same Stellantis Powertrain as Guenther, was fifth for Maserati MSG Racing.
Jake Dennis was next up, taking his Porsche-powered Andretti to sixth ahead of Jaguar TCS Racing’s Nick Cassidy and Stoffel Vandoorne in the second Maserati. Dennis’ Andretti teammate Nico Mueller was ninth, ahead of Zane Maloney who finished a fine tenth for Lola Yamaha Abt.
Edoardo Mortara missed out on the top-10 by just 0.015, finishing the session 11th ahead of Dan Ticktum (Cupra Kiro), Jean-Eric Vergne (DS Penske) and Mitch Evans, who made another gearbox change, taking his cumulative grid penalty for the weekend up to 80-places – everything past the first 20 being converted into a stop-and-go penalty during the race.
David Beckmann finished 15th for Cupra Kiro ahead of Sam Bird in the second McLaren, while the Envision Racing pairing of Sebastien Buemi and Robin Frijns were split by Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein.
Norman Nato and Lucas di Grassi finished 20th and 21st respectively, with championship leader Oliver Rowland finishing at the bottom of the timesheets. Both he and teammate Nato struggled to grapple with an optimal setup throughout the session, with the two lapping together in their Nissans during a session.
All drivers completed their fastest laps using the full complement of 350 kW and four-wheel-drive, while da Costa and Mueller racked up the highest lap counts with 21 apiece.
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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