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Cassidy on second Shanghai pole after rain-swept qualifying
Nick Cassidy will start the second race of the Shanghai E-Prix from pole following a condensed qualifying session which featured no head-to-head duels.
The 30 minute practice session at the start of the day – which had already been brought forward by an hour because of the threat of rain – was red flagged after just six minutes, and despite an extension of half an hour, it never got underway again. Nevertheless, drivers had set times, so with the possibility of qualifying not going ahead, it would have set the grid.
Qualifying did run, however, but only as a pair of Group sessions, with nobody advancing to Duels. Jaguar TCS Racing's Cassidy was quickest in the first of those groups, as he had been in morning practice, with the first group deciding the odd numbered grid positions and the second deciding evens as normal.
Cassidy's best time in Group A was a 1m 31.305, 0.441s quicker than TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein, with Jake Hughes going third-quickest for Maserati MSG Racing.
Weather worsened towards the end of Group A’s 12 minute run on track, with nobody improving on their final laps as they struggled to find grip with the all-weather Hankook tires and only rear-wheel-drive available amid the near-constant standing water around the track, and Group B’s times were all considerably slower when they took to the track afterwards as a result.
In the other factory Porsche, Antonio Felix da Costa was the pacesetter in the second group with a fastest time of 1m 32.952s, 0.123s ahead of Lola Yamaha Abt’s Lucas di Grassi and Saturday podium finisher Jean-Eric Vergne for DS Penske.
Group B’s time on track came to a premature end after a pair of red flags. The first came with four minutes to go after Envision Racing’s Sebastien Buemi spun after a brake failure at Turn 5. He was able to recover the car after performing a power cycle. The session was resumed but stopped again with 1m36s to go as the rain got heavier and the amount of standing water rendered it too dangerous to continue.
Cassidy's pole is his and Jaguar's first since the final round of last season. Starting behind him and da Costa will be Wehrlein and di Grassi, with Hughes and Vergne occupying the third row of the grid.
Nyck de Vries will line up seventh for Mahindra alongside Stoffel Vandoorne in the second Maserati, with Saturday race winner Maximilian Guenther (DS Penske) ninth and Nico Mueller 10th for Andretti.
Zane Maloney will start 11th on the grid for Lola, ahead of Robin Frijns (Envision), Mitch Evans (Jaguar) and Taylor Barnard who will start 14th for NEOM McLaren after finishing seventh in Group B following a spin at Turn 1.
Mahindra’s Edoardo Mortara will line up 15th on the grid, with Sam Bird 16th in the other McLaren and championship leader Oliver Rowland 17th.
Rowland finished ninth in Group A, having spent much of the session running behind his Nissan teammate Norman Nato. The pair swapped places on track before a final push lap attempt, but they both backed out of their respective attempts as the rain got heavier.
Andretti's Jake Dennis will occupy 18th on the grid ahead of Cupra Kiro’s Dan Ticktum, Buemi, Nato, and David Beckmann in the other Kiro, who had a similar spin to Buemi in Group B, but didn't come to a stop unlike the Swiss driver.
Sunday’s race is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. local (1 a.m. ET), and is still set to go ahead at the time of writing, despite continued heavy rain.
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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