Envision Virgin Racing’s Robin Frijns set the pace in the first Practice in Marrakesh with a time of 1:17.808s – over a two second improvement on the previous Marrakesh record.
The Dutchman was followed by previous race winner Antonio Felix da Costa (BMW i Andretti Motorsport) and Sam Bird (Envision Virgin Racing) in third.
Practice got underway at with the sun starting to peak over the Atlas mountains in the distance. For the first time, the Gen2 cars ran in partial light, their halo’s glowing as they made their way around the Circuit International Automobile Moulay El Hassan.
Despite the cold conditions, all but two cars managed to break the previous record (1:19.651s set by Nico Mueller) around the Marrakesh track, with one notable exception – Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler’s Lucas di Grassi who was ‘certain’ of an Audi comeback yesterday.
Here in Red City, on the edge of the Sahara desert, temperatures can dip as low as two degrees celsius in the morning but drivers can expect the temperature to climb to 20 degrees celsius for the race, making it difficult to form a strategy