Nyck de Vries, Mercedes, Formula E, Diriyah E-Prix, Race 2, 2022

De Vries snatches pole for second Diriyah E-Prix by five-thousandths of a second

Formula E

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Formula E world champion Nyck de Vries took his first pole position of the 2022 season after defeating Edoardo Mortara byt just five-thousandths of a second in the final qualifying duel for the second Diriyah E-Prix.

De Vries made it two poles out of two for Mercedes after team mate Stoffel Vandoorne took pole for the opening race yesterday. Mortara will line up alongside the world champion on the front row of the grid after only just missing out by just 0.005 seconds.

Semi-finalists Robin Frijns and Lucas di Grassi will start on the second row of the grid, ahead of Andre Lotterer’s Porsche in fifth and the two Techeetahs of Jean-Eric Vergne and Antonio Felix da Costa in sixth and seventh. Oliver Rowland was eliminated from his quarter final, but a three-place grid penalty for a collision with Frijns in yesterday’s opening race will see him fall to tenth.

A bizarre situation occured in the second quarter final between Da Costa and Di Grassi, where Da Costa failed to leave the pitlane after receiving a green light, meaning Di Grassi was unable to join the track before the pitlane closed. Di Grassi was eventually permitted to take to the track after Da Costa had completed his lap and ultimately eliminated the Techeetah driver. Da Costa remains under investigation by the stewards for impeding.

Of the drivers who failed to progress through to the duels, yesterday’s polesitter Stoffel Vandoorne was the most notable casualty. The Mercedes driver could only manage the sixth-fastest time in Group B, meaning he would start only 12th for this evening’s race. Jake Dennis, who finished on the podium in third place in yesterday’s opening race, could not advance through to the duels after going only fifth fastest in Group A, but will inherit eighth on the grid after Rowland’s penalty.

Sam Bird hit the wall during group qualifying, damaging his Jaguar and dooming him to 21st on the grid. After a crash in the morning practice session, Envision driver Nick Cassidy was unable to participate in qualifying and will start from the back of the field.

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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5 comments on “De Vries snatches pole for second Diriyah E-Prix by five-thousandths of a second”

  1. Eight out of the last ten articles are about Formula E. The (8) FE articles have drawn 57 comments total while the (2) non-FE articles have drawn 135 comments….. Enough FE, especially as there is news about Honda and RBR that is way more interesting and hasn’t yet been posted on this site.

    1. – Formula E was on this weekend, F1 was not
      – the Honda/RBR news is an offhand quote from Helmut Marko in the Austrian press that, as you can imagine, it’s prudent to follow up with the relevant people to work out if it is, in fact, news. Take that information as you will.

    2. Steve R

      Enough FE

      A little bit of a strong demand. This isn’t exclusively an F1 forum, and how hard is it to ‘not read’ the FE articles if you are not interested?

      I’d love more coverage of a wider range of motorsport myself. That said, a more user friendly filter would be handy if this were to eventuate.

      1. Yeah, I like coverage of other motorsports, but the constant barrage of FE is just too much. The series isn’t really interesting to most of the Racefans readers as we can see by the number of comments. Maybe take it back a bit and summarize it in a single or couple of posts.

    3. I certainly am interested in FE and since there were 2 FE races this weekend and no real F! news, this is perfectly normal. My only wish would be to have separate RSS feeds for each category, because sometimes I do watch something later and I would like to avoid news about that specific category until I have time to watch @keithcollantine.

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