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Wehrlein fastest as Formula E Season 12 gets underway
Pascal Wehrlein left it late to top the first practice session of the new Formula E season, usurping Mahindra’s Nyck de Vries in the final seconds of the session.
Following the cancellation of Friday’s FP1 session, Saturday’s session was extended from 40 minutes to an hour.
De Vries spent much of the session at the top of the times, leading after 15 minutes, then returning there with 23 minutes to go after spells for Mitch Evans and Oliver Rowland at the top. Dan Ticktum moved up with six-and-a-half minutes to go – after a front powertrain issue he had early in the session was resolved – but was only there briefly as de Vries went fastest again with two minutes remaining. But as the checkered flag fell, Porsche driver Wehrlein moved to the fore with a 1m09.853s lap, 0.057s quicker than the Dutchman's best.
Ticktum remained third for Cupra Kiro, behind Wehrlein and de Vries, with the top three covered by less than a tenth of a second.
The top-10 was covered by just 0.402s, with Edoardo Mortara fourth in the second Mahindra and the Nissans of Oliver Rowland and Norman Nato fifth and sixth.
Jean-Eric Vergne was seventh in what was Citroen Racing’s first session in Formula E. He finished ahead of new Porsche driver Nico Mueller, with Andretti’s latest signing Felipe Drugovich ninth ahead of Maximilian Guenther for DS Penske.
Mitch Evans missed out on the top 10 by 0.012s – he finished 11th, beating his former Jaguar teammate Nick Cassidy, now of Citroen.
Sebastien Buemi was 13th for Envision Racing, ahead of Jake Dennis in the other Andretti, Jaguar’s Antonio Felix da Costa, and Taylor Barnard who has moved to DS Penske following McLaren’s departure from Formula E.
Joel Eriksson was 17th for Envision, ahead of Lola Yamaha Abt’s Lucas di Grassi who slowed to a crawl near the pit entry just before the halfway point in the session. He was able to keep going after performing a power cycle.
Pepe Marti was 19th for Cupra Kiro. The rookie had a brush with the wall early int he session, and curiously spent more time focusing on 350kW/four-wheel-drive laps rather than the standard 300kw/rear-wheel-drive configuration he’ll spend the majority of the race in. The order was completed by Zane Maloney in the other Lola.
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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