Hughes ahead in second Jakarta E-Prix practice as dust turns to damp

Jake Hughes set the pace in second practice for the Jakarta E-Prix as the dry and dusty conditions from Friday turned into damp after rain ahead of the session.

The Maserati MSG Racing driver’s best time of 1m 13.673s came with 14 minutes of the 40-minutes session remaining, and was 1.424s quicker than TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein, with Hughes and the NEOM McLaren cars of Taylor Barnard and Sam Bird being the only drivers to complete laps on the full 350 kW power setting with four-wheel-drive as teams set about planning for an anticipated wet race later on on Saturday.

Barnard was third quickest, 0.087s off Wehrlein, with Edorardo Mortara fourth for Mahindra, and Stoffel Vandoorne bookending the top-five in the second Maserati.

Nyck de Vries was sixth for Manhindra, ahead of championship leader, Nissan driver Oliver Rowland, and Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns who was getting his first meaningful running of the weekend under his belt after his FP1 run was curtailed by suspension failure and a brush with the wall.

Jean-Eric Vergne was nith for DS Penske, ahead of Maserati’s Jake Dennis, who completed the top-10.

Sebastien Buemi wound up 11th in the second Envision, ahead of Antonio Felix da Casta, Mitch Evans, Norman Nato – who along with factory Nissan teammate Rowland and Nissan customer Bird completed the most laps with 23 – and Dan Ticktum. Nico Mueller was 16th, with most recent Jakarta winner Maximilian Guenther down in 17th.

Bird ended the session 18th, ahead of David Beckmann and the Lola Yamaha Abt duo of Zane Maloney and Lucas di Grassi.

Nick Cassidy ended up at the bottom of the timesheets after spending much of the session in the garage after sustaining a suspension issue similar to Frijns’ Friday one early in the session.

Unlike Frijns, though, he avoided contact with the wall and was able to return to the track in the final seven minutes. He completed 12 laps in total, six off Beckmann who had the next lowest lap count.

RESULTS

Formula E

ShareThis is disabled until you accept Social Networking cookies.

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?

Read Dominik Wilde's articles