Wehrlein leads first day of Formula E pre-season testing

Pascal Wehrlein made his title intentions clear early on by setting the fastest time on the first day of Formula E testing at Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia.

The Porsche driver, who lost last season's title to Nissan's Oliver Rowland, set a benchmark of 1m21.714s around the 2.098-mile, 15-turn variation of the track in Northern Spain in the sole three-hour afternoon session, besting Mahindra’s Nyck de Vries by 0.219s.

Jake Dennis, champion of the first GEN3 season in 2022-23, set the pace early on but ended the day third quickest for Andretti, just 0.052s back from de Vries, while Edoardo Mortara – who briefly topped the times in the final hour – ensured both Mahindras were near the top of the timesheets with the fourth-fastest time.

Rowland rounded out the top five, ahead of Jaguar TCS Racing debutant Antonio Felix da Costa, while his teammate Mitch Evans was eighth, DS Penske’s Maximilian Guenther splitting the two Jaguars.

The newly minted Citroen squad completed the top 10 with Jean-Eric Vergne ninth and Nick Cassidy 10th. Envision Racing's Sebastien Buemi was 11th courtesy of his final lap of the day ahead of new Porsche signing Nico Mueller, who completed the most laps with 51 in the bag.

Lucas di Grassi was 13th for Lola Yamaha Abt, ahead of Nissan's Norman Nato and new DS Penske driver Taylor Barnard.

The Brit, who moved to the American team after McLaren Electric Racing closed its doors at the end of last season, had his day interrupted by an excursion into the gravel at Turn 12 early in the day. The incident brought out a brief red flag and the impact on his day was minimal as he was able to get back out and complete 28 laps – that was the second-lowest total of the day though, with second-fastest driver de Vries the only driver to do fewer (23).

Zane Maloney (Lola), Joel Eriksson (Envision) and Dan Ticktum (Cupra Kiro) were next up in the finishing order, with rookies Felipe Drugovich (Andretti) and Pepe Marti (Kiro) completing the field. Drugovich was the only driver who didn't set his fastest time with the full 350kW power allowance and four-wheel-drive.

RESULTS

Topics

formula e

pascal wehrlein

porsche

circuit ricardo tormo

oliver rowland

mahindra racing

jake dennis

nissan

ds penske

andretti

Formula E

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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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