The Jaguar TCS team temporarily parked its cars in the second half of this morning’s Formula E test session at Valencia while it investigated an accident by Sebastien Buemi’s Envision Racing Jaguar I-Type6.
Buemi left the circuit at Turn 4 just before the hour mark of the three-hour session. His car impacted the barrier on the outside of the circuit, with eyewitnesses stating that the 2015-16 champion seemed to be not able to slow his car down at all.
The Jaguar incurred damage to its front two corners, front bodywork and floor and was returned to the Envision pit for further analysis. The Envision team was preparing a new monocoque for Buemi but he is unlikely to return to the action this afternoon in his designated entry.
Jaguar elected to keep the factory entries of Sam Bird and Mitch Evans in the pits, and also advised the Nick Cassidy car to stay in, while Buemi’s shunt was investigated.
Both Bird and Evans returned to the track before the end of the session, initially to conduct practice starts at the end of the pitlane before they started full laps again. Cassidy did not return to the track, meaning he completed only an installation lap at the start of the session.
Jaguar provided The Race with a statement that read: “In conjunction with Envision Racing, we have launched an investigation into the issues that occurred on Sebastian Buemi’s Envision race car in test session six this morning. As a precaution, we have limited our run plans until we’ve analysed the data.”
Buemi had endured a difficult start to the test this week and lost considerable time after a persistent problem on his car.
This is believed to have been a deep-rooted electrical fault within the powertrain, although Buemi did complete a trouble-free run in the extra test session on Thursday afternoon, logging 22 laps and setting the third-quickest time.
Buemi’s team-mate Nick Cassidy had a similar episode on Tuesday, skating through the Turn 7 gravel before pitting his car.
Formula E has been braced for accidents such as Buemi’s. Some private testing accidents are known to have occurred because drivers could not adequately brake when they suffered technical problems. This has prompted an additional braking failsafe system to be implemented.
But the failsafe is unlikely to be available until after the first three races of the championship, which has raised concern among some drivers and also teams.
NEOM McLaren’s Jake Hughes told The Race that he felt confident that the FIA and Formula E would make the right calls on ensuring driver safety.
“Every team and manufacturer has a lot of different systems on the car that interact with the spec parts we have on the car in Gen3, so I can’t speak for them,” he said.
“Every time I’ve driven the car in testing so far or read up on what Nissan are doing in their manufacturer test days, we haven’t had any of those issues. So, I can only speak from in our own house, nevertheless I feel confident that whatever FEO and FIA decide is necessary is for the right reasons so I trust their opinion.”
Meanwhile, Nissan’s Tommaso Volpe told The Race that “the cars are safe. I mean, I don’t think we have any issues with that”.
“Considering the conversations and the openness that we are having in the last two weeks, I think they [FIA] will be doing everything possible to make sure that there won’t be any major issues, even in the first races.”
Jean-Eric Vergne set the best lap of the test so far in the morning session, peaking on a lap of 1m25.248s in his DS Penske car. That time was 0.036s faster than the McLaren of Hughes, who in turn was just 0.002s ahead of the second DS of Stoffel Vandoorne.
As well as no time being registered by Cassidy, Sergio Sette Camara also failed to log a timed lap in his NIO due to an unspecified technical problem.
