After a bit over a month of wait, Formula E heads to the Jarama Circuit for the CUPRA Raval Madrid E-Prix. Dan Ticktum was quickest in FP1 while Felipe Drugovich was topped a wet FP2.
Qualifying
In Group A Wehrlein, Rowland, Evans, Da Costa, Buemì, Marti, De Vries, Vergne, Maloney and Drugovich battled it out to advance to the duel stage.
Qualifying started with a still wet track which caused much troubles for the drivers during this session. In fact, the sessions were reduced from 12 to 10 minutes each. Due to the hard conditions drivers had to do multiple warm up laps, most relying on the last one to be the fastest. In fast changing conditions drivers succeeded one another at the top of the standings with De Vries, Da Costa, Wehrlein and Rowland advancing to the duels with Maloney missing out by 0.343.
In group B, the timings got quicker. Drivers went out immediately, doing multiple warm-up laps. Nato stood out among the other drivers, going a second quicker than Cassidy in second place. In the end Nato, Mortara, Cassidy and Günther were the ones going through to the next stage of qualifying.
In the duels stage, Wehrlein went up against his ex teammate Da Costa. Later, De Vries faced Rowland who made an error during his lap and was immediately out. Cassidy competed against Mortara while Nato took on Günther but the German made an trip in the gravel that took him out of contention. In the semifinals, Da Costa went head-to-head with De Vries, while Cassidy faced Nato for a chance to battle for pole position.
The last duel saw Nick Cassidy take Citroen first ever pole position in Formula E against Nyck De Vries. Winning pole position also meant the Kiwi gained 3 points which put him ahead of Oliver Rowland in the championship.
Race
At the start of the race, Cassidy got a great lunch mantaining first position while the others battled it out. Nato went out falling behind in the space of two corner. Meanwhile Ticktum got a stellar launch off the line and went from ninth to fouth. Maloney served a drive through penalty for a technical infringement.
On lap 2, De Vries rear-ended Wehrlein and lost his front wing but continued on. On lap 4 Ticktum, Wehrlein and Cassidy fought for the lead. Drugovich was the first to activate Attack mode charging forward. In just a couple of laps he was in 4th.
Rowland also got a drive through penalty for overpowering during the start procedure while De Vries got a five second time penalty for the earlier incident. On lap 8, Drugovich took the lead of the race.
Vergne was pushed off by Barnard dropping to the back of the pack. The British driver then got a ten second time penalty, having been found at fault for the incident.
Cassidy took the lead back while Pepe Marti activated attack mode pushing forward. The Spanish driver overtook every driver to take first position in front of his teammate. On lap 12, Da Costa was the first driver to pit, followed by Wehrlein and Günther. Everyone else pitted only a couple of lap later, apart from Rowland and Evans.
Da Costa’s undercut worked very well putting him in the lead while waiting got Cassidy all the way in 12th. Günther took the lead from the Jaguar driver in a lonely face off between the two.
With only four laps to go, Da Costa used Attack Mode but retained the lead. Behind him, most of the field actived Attack Mode so the standings kept changing. Meanwhile, Evans charged forward ending up in third over Wehrlein. He overtook Ticktum for second place and immediately went on to attack his teammate. At the end Da Costa came out victorious, while in a last minute move Wehrlein outsmarted Ticktum to stand on the third step of the podium. Nyck Cassidy went from pole to out of the points, crossing the finish line in 17th.
Top Ten:
- A. Da Costa
- M. Evans
- P. Wehrlein
- D. Ticktum
- E. Mortara
- S. Buemi
- J. Dennis
- N. Mueller
- P. Marti
- J. Eriksson
The next race will be the German Double header in Berlin, on May 02 and 03. Who will be on the top step of the podium next time?
Featured image credit: Formula E
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