Andre Lotterer posted the fastest time on the first day of Formula E testing at Valencia Circuit, with a late lap dethroning Da Costa and Nick Cassidy’s eye-catching efforts.
Lotterer did set the early pace in Session 2 with an early sighter, with Nico Mueller able to follow suit in the DRAGON / PENSKE.
It was Nick Cassidy (Envision Virgin Racing) that caught the eye, though, as he flew to a 1:12.982, which was enough to see him atop the times for more than two hours of the afternoon’s running.
Stoffel Vandoorne (Mercedes-Benz EQ) looked handy, too – his Sector 1 the best of the bunch at the time, though Cassidy controlled Sectors 2 and 3 until the late flurry of activity from Lotterer, Vergne and Da Costa.
Cassidy will be pleased with the day’s fourth-quickest effort, however, with the rookies arguably the story of the day. Norman Nato (ROKiT Venturi Racing) rounded out the day seventh best and Jake Dennis (BMW i Andretti Motorsport) also finished Day 1 inside the top 10.
As always in testing, the caveat is that it’s not all about pure pace with teams working through complex programmes and inductions but a strong time on the board can’t hurt.
“P1 is always a good thing,” said Lotterer. “But the priority was to find out more about the car and get through our testing programme.”
“We almost managed to do everything we wanted to do today. It’s a never-ending process to find a better car balance and we’re never happy. There’s plenty to do better and it’s a tight gap to P2, so we need to keep working hard in the next few days.”
With almost 1800 laps already under the collective belt of our teams, we’re back for more on Day 2 of the official Formula E pre-season test at Valencia’s Circuit Ricardo Tormo from 0900 CET tomorrow.
