Formula E completed a simulated race in testing today to include the new for 2022 additional time allowance that has replaced the energy reduction method that triggered last April’s Valencia fiasco.
Next season races will have an extra time allowance to account for racing laps run under full course yellow or safety car periods, rather than the cars having energy deducted so that they cannot run flat-out in races that have featured running under yellow.
Reigning champion Nyck de Vries ‘won’ the mock race held in the morning session, heading a Mercedes powered 1-2-3-4.
The Dutchman started from fourth on the randomly generated grid and led the early stages, overtaking a fast-starting Mahindra driven by Alexander Sims.
De Vries and Mercedes team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne then switched the lead several times.
Edoardo Mortara came through from 10th to take third for Mercedes customer Venturi ahead of new team-mate Lucas di Grassi.
Nissan e.dams pairing Sebastien Buemi and Maximilian Guenther rounded out the top six with Buemi overtaking his new team-mate in the final moments of the event.
The race featured two neutralisations. The first came when Mitch Evans, starting from the nominal pole, and his Jaguar team-mate Sam Bird failed to get away cleanly from the grid.
Third place starting Vandoorne had to take evasive action as he sprinted away before a full course yellow was instantly deployed.
Well…That was pretty close! 😅🙈#WeDriveTheCity #ABBFormulaE pic.twitter.com/66FmzrZs54
— Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team (@MercedesEQFE) November 30, 2021
Jaguar’s James Barclay told The Race that the issue was “some soft limits that we apply on the powertrains when we’re back at base before we come here in terms of just getting everything ready.
“We’ve left those top limits in place, basically, so that just triggered a system reset, which we did and then we were good to go again,” added Barclay.
The caution for the fluffed starts added 3 minutes and 45 seconds on to the 45 minutes and one lap race distance.
Then a simulated safety car period with 12 minutes of the race to go ensured an extra three minutes were added, meaning a total of six minutes and 45 seconds ran as the added time.
Several cars elected not to finish the race, with both DS Techeetahs of Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne and Porsche’s Andre Lotterer electing to pit well before the chequered flag.
Alice Powell, who was deputising for Robin Frijns at Envision in today’s sessions, also pitted, while the three rookie race drivers in 2022 – Oliver Askew, Dan Ticktum and Antonio Giovinazzi ‘finished’ in 16th, 17th, and 18th positions as the last cars to take the chequered.
As well as the dummy race, Tuesday featured several hours of general testing with da Costa lapping the quickest in the morning by setting a best of 1m26.769s.
In the three hours allocated for the afternoon session it was Mercedes’ Vandoorne who topped the times with a 1m26.045s lap, the quickest ever registered on the Formula E track configuration that was also used for the races in April.
Vandoorne’s lap was just 0.044s faster than Mortara’s effort, with the Venturi driver in turn 0.011s ahead of Avalanche Andretti’s Jake Dennis.
De Vries made it three Mercedes powered cars in the top four, while Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein and Evans’ Jaguar rounded out the top six.
Askew was the fastest rookie in 11th and Giovinazzi placed 17th in his Penske EV-5 machine.
NIO 333 newcomer Ticktum got to within 0.4s of team-mate Oliver Turvey in Tuesday afternoons session as he continued to learn the NIO 333 001 car, although he, along with several other drivers, was penalised on two occasions for track limit violations.
There was only one red flag during the free test session which came after Mortara collected a cone at the pit exit.
