Mahindra Racing’s Edoardo Mortara has taken pole position for this afternoon’s Berlin E-Prix.
The Swiss kept bringing the surprises in every stage of the qualifying session, and eventually won his final duel against DS Penske’s Stoffel Vandoorne, who lines-up second.
Vandoorne’s team-mate Jean-Éric Vergne lines-up fourth, ahead of the ERT of Sergio Sette Camara, with home favourites Max Günther and Pascal Wehrlein fifth and sixth respectively.
Lucas di Grassi will start seventh, with Antonio Felix da Costa eighth, and the Jaguar pair of Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans ninth and tenth.
The result will give the Mahindra team a huge boost ahead of the race, with the team without any points so far in Season 10. The second car of rookie Jordan King – standing-in for the WEC-racing Nyck de Vries – lines-up 15th.
The other four rookies deputising for drivers on WEC duty this weekend all gave credible performances, with South African Kelvin van der Linde the highest-placed of the quartet, qualifying 11th, with Joel Eriksson 18th and Paul Aron 19th, both for Envision Racing.
HOW THE SESSION UNFOLDED
GROUP A
Group A threw-up a number of shocks, with Mortara topping it with a tine of 1:02.619s, one-and-a-half tenths ahead of Wehrlein, despite clipping the wall during an earlier run. Vergne was third and Jehan Daruvala an impressive fourth place. Monaco winner Evans missed out by just under one tenth, with Jake Dennis struggling again in qualifying, 11th and last, a whopping five tenths of a second off the pace.
GROUP B
There were more surprises in Group B, with di Grassi setting a time of 1:02.615. Günther was second, just under a tenth off the ABT Cupra, with Vandoorne third, and Sette Camara a brilliant fourth for ERT. Cassidy, along with team-mate Evans, did not make the duels, with the sister ABT of rookie van der Linde sixth. Taylor Barnard was seventh, ahead of team-mate Jake Hughes in ninth, sandwiching Nissan’s Oliver Rowland. Norman Nato was last, completing a miserable morning for the Andretti team once again.
DUELS
Quarter-final one would see a titan clash between Vergne and Wehrlein, and the Frenchman would come out on top, less than a tenth ahead of the Porsche, who was still happy with the result having missed virtually all of FP1 with a technical gremlin.
The second quarter-final of Mortara-Daruvala saw the Mahindra man make it through by over two tenths, with the Indian set to take a grid penalty and start at the back.
The second Penske of Vandoorne was faced with the challenge of Günther, but the German could not get his car hooked-up and it would aid the Belgian’s progression to the semi-finals, two tenths ahead.
In an unlikely all-Brazilian duel of Sette Camara vs di Grassi, it would be the ERT man who would prevail, two tenths ahead of the ABT veteran.
SEMI-FINALS
The first semi-final of Vergne vs Mortara brought yet another shock as Mortara made it to the final, a tenth ahead after Vergne lost time in the final sector of his lap.
In the Sette Camara vs Vandoorne matchup, it would be Vandoorne who made it through, just under two tenths ahead of the ERT.
FINAL
In a final that perhaps nobody expected, it would bring a result between the two that nobody expected, with Mortara, crashing out two weeks ago in Monaco and the Mahindra team points-less, taking pole by a comfortable margin of over two-and-a-half tenths, with a time of 1:01.741s.
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