Yahoo Autos DS Penske’s Guenther leads day two of Formula E testing
Maximilian Guenther went quickest as Formula E testing continued at Circuito del Jarama in Spain.
The DS Penske driver, who joined the team in the off-season, set a best time of 1m28.408s, with all of the top 10 in the afternoon covered by just 0.389s. His best time came in the final hour of the second three-hour session, just after a brief red flag to repair damage to the curb at Turn 9. Full repairs to the affected portion of the track will be made tonight.
Kiro Race Co. continued to impress its year-old Porsche powertrains, Dan Ticktum going second quickest in the afternoon, and David Beckman fourth, the pair being split by Jean-Eric Vergne in the other DS Penske. Ticktum had gone fourth quickest in the morning session as well.
Nyck de Vries completed the top five ahead of Mahindra teammate Edoardo Mortara, with the two Jaguar TCS Racing cars of Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans ending their first day of running (after being banned from taking to the track on Tuesday due to a cost cap infringement) seventh and 10th respectively. The pair were split by Lola Yamaha Abt’s Zane Maloney and Andretti’s Jake Dennis in the highest-placed current-spec Porsche. Cassidy stopped out on track on the run to Turn 1 towards the end of the morning session, with his car needing to be recovered, but he had a trouble-free afternoon.
Nico Mueller ended the day 11th overall, ahead of Oliver Rowland, another driver getting his first taste of official pre-season running after Nissan were also sidelined by the same cost-cap penalty as Jaguar yesterday.
Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Felix da Costa were 13th and 14th respectively in the afternoon, having both featured in the top-10 in the morning, while Sebastien Buemi matched his morning performance by winding up 15th in the afternoon, one spot ahead of his Envision Racing teammate Robin Frijns, who’d improved from 17th earlier in the day.
Norman Nato was 17th in the second Nissan, having finished at the bottom of the timesheets in the first session of the day. He was ahead of Lucas di Grassi and the NEOM McLaren duo of Taylor Barnard and Sam Bird. Bird had an off in the morning, bringing out the first red flag of the day, after he went into the gravel at Turn 1 while moving out of the way of a quicker car while on cold tires.
Maserati’s Jake Hughes topped the morning session but was 21st in the afternoon having spent much of the session running in tandem with teammate Stoffel Vandoorne as they worked on race pace and long runs – subsequently neither Maseratis or the two McLarens ran on full power in the afternoon. Vandoorne ended the day last, having gone fifth fastest earlier on.
