Rowland Leads Diriyah First Practice As De Vries Crashes
Calum Gill 15:58 27/01/2022
Oliver Rowland topped the opening Formula E practice session of the year at the Diriyah E-Prix as reigning champion Nyck de Vries prematurely ended his session after hitting the barriers.
Just over five minutes into the now 30 minute session - 15 minutes less than last year - Vries lost control of his Mercedes EQ over the bumps through the Turn 2/3 kinks and clipped the wall at Turn 4. The damage he sustained from that contact forced him to pull his car off the track and he didn’t re-join the session. It means de Vries will only have the 30-minute second practice session to prepare for the first qualifying session of the year. On his first weekend since switching from Nissan to Mahindra, Yorkshireman Rowland was quickest in FP1, beating 2019-20 champion António Félix da Costa by 0.158 seconds with a last-minute effort.
Rowland topped the session on a 1:10.559, well over two seconds slower than last year’s pole position laps as the drivers struggled for grip on the dusty Diriyah circuit. Da Costa was second fastest ahead of Avalanche Andretti’s Jake Dennis and his DS Techeetah team-mate Jean-Éric Vergne. Jaguar’s Mitch Evans rounded out the top five ahead of Venturi’s Edoardo Mortara and the leading Porsche of Pascal Wehrlein. Former title adversaries Sébastien Buemi and Lucas di Grassi were eighth- and ninth-quickest, with the latter completing his first official session for his new Venturi team following Audi’s exit.
The top 10 was rounded out by Envision’s Nick Cassidy, with André Lotterer eleventh for Porsche and Alexander Sims 12th for Mahindra. Dan Ticktum was the quickest of the rookie trio for NIO 333 in 13th place, ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne (Mercedes), Robin Frijns (Envision) and Sam Bird (Jaguar). Nissan newcomer Maximilian Günther was 17th, followed by Dragon's Sérgio Sette Camara and NIO 333's Oliver Turvey. Formula 1 convert Antonio Giovinazzi and Andretti’s debutant Oliver Askew were the two slowest drivers to set a representative time in 20th and 21st, with de Vries at the bottom of the timesheets.
