In the last dramatic session before qualifying, we saw a few yellow and red flags. Teams were learning more about the new feature for this race, PIT BOOST, and some drivers even lent their cars to rookies for the Free Practice 0 yesterday.
Now, practice is over as we returned to what the drivers know well. Qualifying marked the first competitive session of this stop in Jeddah, with drivers looking to finish as high as possible, knowing overtaking might be difficult here. Who came out on top to receive the Julius Bär Pole Position?
Groups Stage
As usual, Formula E qualifying is divided into a group stage, followed by the duels. In the first stage, drivers got divided by their Drivers’ World Championship position, as follows:
Track evolutions wasn’t as high as at some other circuits, ensuring both groups have similar conditions and chances.
Group A
The cars came out for their assigned 10 minutes with Günther first to set a lap time of 1:23.92. It was more of an installation lap on his side with both McLaren drivers and de Vries immediately improving in front of him. Di Grassi in Lola was the last car to come out of the pits to set his own lap time.
Jaguar started improving after being on the backfoot in all sessions so far, getting both cars in the top four with five mins left on board. The onboards showed that there is still some work to do on their side though.
Frijns suffered a bad slide that saw him doing a full 180° turn on track, losing valuable lap time with just over three minutes left. At the time Barnard improved to provisional first place with 1.17.505, the fastest time we saw so far from anyone during the last two days.
Cassidy aborted his fast lap with two minutes remaining, meaning he only got one shot before the time ran out to improve from his current underwhelming P8. He came on the radio to say he “cannot turn properly“, but started one more lap, nonetheless. He managed to get his personal best in the middle sector, even with a minor lock up and went P4 as the checkered flag came out.
Barnard improved his own fastest lap even more to stay in the first place, as Günther pushed Cassidy out of P4. De Vries was the last to improve to P3 to knock Evans one position lower to round up the top four proceeding into duels.
Cassidy was joined by Bird, da Costa, Müller, Buemi, di Grassi, and Frijns who didn’t set times good enough to get promoted into duels. Some of these names were surprising, namely the championship leader down in p7.
Group B
With group B heading out, Rowland was the first driver to set a fast time with his 1:20.95. That lap was soon forgotten with Jake Dennis improving to provisional first place, with a time down in 1:17s. He wasn’t too happy, reporting understeer on the radio and showing there might be more left in the car.
Rowland was once again the first to set a flying lap with five minutes left, ending up just 0.045 in front of Wehrlein. Jake Dennis scored personal best in the first sector on another try, followed by the fastest middle sector overall, but just missing out in the last one to stay in third position.
Jake Hughes confirmed that younger drivers feel confident among the close walls of Jeddah Corniche Circuit as he went fastest overall, with Rowland and Nato slotting behind him. With tho minutes remaining, the lap times began dropping further, getting close to Group A’s benchmark.
Jake Dennis received a message from the team, saying “they are looking for 1:17.5s lap time to proceed into duels.” A quick look at hte live timing showed he would need to improve even further for that.
Vandoorne was the first driver to take the checkered flag down in P7, followed by Norman Nato in P6. Beckmann couldn’t improve either, staying down in P9. Maloney and Dennis aborted their last laps, with the Andretti driver sliding in the last sector and heading into pits in P8.
Rowland topped the group B session with Hughes finishing just behind in P2. The top 4 were rounded up by Wehrlein and Ticktum. Ticktum’s positions shows Cupra is on an upward spiral after securing major investment backing a few days ago.
Vergne made a mistake on his last lap that seemed competitive until that moment, effectively knocking himself out of duels. He joined Nato, Vandoorne, Dennis, Beckmann, Maloney, and Mortara, with the latter mentioned not setting a single lap time due to a technical issue.
Duels
Quarterfinals
Top 4 in both groups passed through into the duels. The knock-out part started with one-on-one session of de Vries and Günther from group A. Both drivers frantically tried to warm up their tyres for an ideal lap, using the same compounds as in the group stage. Günther enjoyed a nice margin over de Vries since the start of his lap, finishing huge seven tenths in front of him.
Evans and Barnard made up Quarterfinal 2, with a closer fan voted prediction of who will come up on top from the duo. Barnard showed how comfortable he feels around here so far, getting an early virtual lead of just over a tenth. Evans caught up in the middle sector, only to lose by +0.014 in the last few turns.
The third duel was made of Wehrlein with more experience under his belt than Jake Hughes, although the younger driver started off with tiny advantage. Wehrlein made a step forward in the middle sector, gaining about two tenths as Hughes made a mistake in the final sector and lost any chance to catch up.
Last duel saw Ticktum and Rowland pitched against each other. Both were going back and forth on the early lead, not going over one tenth margin until the late stages of the lap. Rowland started gaining an advantage there, at the end finishing almost four tenths above Ticktum.
Later on, Ticktum’s time got deleted for track limits in turn five – making no change on his defeat to Rowland.
Semifinals
The previous segment left us with last four musketeers: Barnard, Günther, Wehrlein and Rowland. Only the two fastest of them would meet in the final duel for pole.
Semi-final 1 started with Barnard against Günther, promising a close duel. Barnard started just three hundreds ahead, with Günther catching up and improving in the middle sector. Barnard was losing over a tenth in the final turns and despite getting close, he lost out at the end.
Günther set his eyes on the timesheets to see who his competitor in the final would be, with Wehrlein and Rowland against each other in the other semi-final. Wehrlein posed a slight advantage of running off of two poles previously, but Rowland started his lap with a tenth over him. Wehrlein started catching up in the middle sector, with Rowland losing out by a tiny margin on a messier corner exit in the last two turns.
Final
The final shoot-out duo, Günther against Wehrlein, prepared for the very last laps to see who would come out on top for the start of the Race 3. Again, the advantage would have been on Wehrlein’s side with his recent qualifying performance.
Wehrlein started with the smallest margin of 0.008 over Günther, before Günther went deep, and Wehrlein started catching up. They came almost equal on time into the final sector, where Wehrlein lost over three tenths.
Maximilian Günther conquered the pole position for the first race here, but there is no need to be sad for Wehrlein either. The second place might be an advantage here, starting on the cleaner side of the grid, giving him a potential early advantage for the race start.
Mortara ended up as the only one without a lap time set, so he will be looking to improve his position later on today. It’s all eyes on the front row now – Wehrlein in P2, and Günther on the pole – as we slowly prepare for the race.