Free Practice 2 in Jeddah was animated. Two red flags, the session ending early and an investigation for the Lola Yamaha ABT team again.
Who says Free Practice was boring to watch ? Because it certainly was not in Formula E today in Jeddah. The first thirty minutes were mostly about drivers preparing for qualifiying. It was one lap at a time and we didn’t really see the Pit Boost in action. However, Lucas Di Grassi did accidently pressed the Attack Mode button, and asked his engineer to turn it off.
The first red flag of the session was caused by Robin Frijns. On turn 13, his rear brake activated causing him to lose power. After two resets, he managed to make his car work again and safely rejoined the pit lane. He later declared that the team will have to change a component but that he shouldn’t take a penalty. However, he didn’t manage to test the Pit Boost, which could perturb his qualification.
Sam Bird made a small mistake, forcing him to take the escape road. Multiple drivers seem to struggle with understeer when taking the curves, like Jake Dennis. He almost touched the wall towards the end of the session and was complaining about it on the radio. This is something that Andretti must fix to not compromise his weekend.
Zane Maloney and Nick Cassidy are under investigations. The Lola Yamaha ABT driver for another technical infraction, which would be the second since yesterday. A Pit Boost infringement is the cause of the Jaguar TCS Racing driver.
The second red flag was caused by Nyck de Vries and Stoffel Vandoorne. It was the same situation as yesterday during the rookie test. The dutch driver was on a fast lap and the belgian driver came back on the racing line just before the apex. Both of them crashed into each other, ending in material damage. With only two minutes on the clock, the session was not resumed.
António Félix Da Costa finished first and is pretty confident he can do it again in quali later on : “The package is strong which is nice. It gives me confidence that if we do everything right we should be okay. It’s a nice place to be.”