Envision Virgin Racing's Sam Bird jumped to the top of the times during the afternoon session at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Spain as Formula E's first official day of pre-season testing came to a close ahead of the 2019/20 season.
Maximilian Gunther set the pace in the morning with a time of 1:15.926, which Bird swiftly beat as the session resumed after lunch, getting down to a 1:15.570, but Gunther wasn't far behind as he too improved in the afternoon to go second quickest with a time of 1:15.663 for BMW i Andretti.
It was a close session with the top ten covered by just over half a second and the top 16 all within a second of Bird's chart-topping pace.
DS Techeetah's Antonio Felix da Costa was third fastest ahead of Jaguar's Mitch Evans, who split the two Techeetah cars as reigning series champion Jean-Eric Vergne managed the fifth quickest time, a tenth off his team-mate.
The two Nissan e.dams cars were sixth and seventh followed by Mahindra's Pascal Wehrlein, Virgin's Robin Frijns and Audi's Daniel Abt.
Mercedes-Benz EQ rookie Nyck de Vires failed to post a lap time for the majority of the session before going out with minutes to spare and setting a 1:17.654, which was only good enough for 23rd as the Dutch driver suffered technical difficulties in the morning when his car had to be recovered on track.
His Mercedes team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne didn't fair too much better as he failed to better his time from the morning and wound up 22nd quickest overall. Nico Muller, Jerome d'Ambrosio, Edoardo Mortara and Neel Jani also failed to improve in the afternoon.
The session saw a red flag when Jaguar's James Calado stopped at the exit of the pitlane and had to be lifted back to the garage – his second stoppage of the day after crashing in the morning.
| # | Driver | Team | Time | Gap |
| 1 | S. Bird | Envision Virgin Racing | 1:15.570 | |
| 2 | M. Gunther | BMW i Andretti | 1:15.663 | 0.093 |
| 3 | A. da Costa | DS Techeetah | 1:15.681 | 0.111 |
| 4 | M. Evans | Jaguar Racing | 1:16.724 | 0.154 |
| 5 | J. Vergne | DS Techeetah | 1:16.798 | 0.228 |
| 6 | S. Buemi | Nissan e.dams | 1:16.882 | 0.312 |
| 7 | O. Rowland | Nissan e.dams | 1:16.942 | 0.372 |
| 8 | P. Wehrlein | Mahindra Racing | 1:16.975 | 0.405 |
| 9 | R. Frijns | Envision Virgin Racing | 1:16.081 | 0.511 |
| 10 | D. Abt | Audi Sport Abt | 1:16.084 | 0.514 |
| 11 | A. Sims | BMW i Andretti | 1:16.097 | 0.527 |
| 12 | L. di Grassi | Audi Sport Abt | 1:16.140 | 0.570 |
| 13 | N. Muller | GEOX Dragon | 1:16.387 | 0.817 |
| 14 | A. Lotterer | Porsche Racing | 1:16.482 | 0.912 |
| 15 | E. Mortara | Venturi Racing | 1:16.531 | 0.961 |
| 16 | J. d'Ambrosio | Mahindra Racing | 1:16.552 | 0.982 |
| 17 | F. Massa | Venturi Racing | 1:16.580 | 1.010 |
| 18 | B. Hartley | GEOX Dragon | 1:16.698 | 1.128 |
| 19 | O. Turvey | NIO 333 FE | 1:16.867 | 1.297 |
| 20 | J. Calado | Jaguar Racing | 1:17.016 | 1.446 |
| 21 | N. Jani | Porsche Racing | 1:17.343 | 1.727 |
| 22 | S. Vandoorne | Mercedes-Benz EQ | 1:17.389 | 1.819 |
| 23 | N. de Vries | Mercedes-Benz EQ | 1:17.654 | 2.084 |
| 24 | M. Qing Hua | NIO 333 FE | 1:20.220 | 4.650 |
Discussion about this post