In a close-fought battle between Mitch Evans and Jean Eric Vergne in the finals, Evans took pole by 21 milliseconds for Jaguar TCS sending the home crowd into raptures
If you’re not familiar with the Formula E qualifying format, here’s a graphic to get you up to speed!
The odd-placers in the championship were in Group A, out of which, Gunther, Evans, Fenestraz and Buemi went through to the next round.
Hughes finished fastest on track but was demoted due to a pit lane infringement. Championship leader Wherlein in his Porsche hit traffic on his final lap, ending down in 6th in his group. However, Porsche comes alive in the race usually, so we can’t discount him from the race!
Both the Mahindra boys in group A had a tale of 2 halves. Rowland finished 7th and DiGrassi finished last. Evans finished 2nd, as mentioned before, so things are looking good for Jaguar!
Group B saw the first red flag! Linde was unable to brake into turn 16, bumping the barriers and bringing the session to a halt.
Rast went fastest, nearly making it a double for McLaren. Home team Jaguar TCS’ Bird made it as did Mortara and Vergne from Maserati and Penske respectively.
After a short reset, the quarter-finals commenced. Buemi beat Gunther and earned a spot in the semis for the third time!
The most notable quarter-final was Vergne vs Bird. Bird edged our Vergne in his Jaguar TCS by a smidge of 0.036 seconds on track! However, his laptime was deleted for track limit violations! So Vergne is through! That was a frustrating session for Bird, who looked set for finals at least.
Maserati spoiled McLaren’s record of reaching the semis every race with Mortara, who took advantage of Rast’s error on track.
A bizarre situation occurred when both Mortara and Rast’s laptimes were deleted. This caused the FIA to delay the start of the semis when they were wondering who to promote when both of them violated track limits.
Ultimately we ended up having no one let through, and Vergne just did a solo lap to make it to the finals.
With the slower cars now eliminated, the competition was tense for the semi-finals. After a small delay in sorting out the penalties, the semi-finals saw Vergne and Evans beat out their competition to the finals.
Another important factor in this duel format is that power is limited to 300kW, i.e 402 bhp. Once we reach duels, semis and the final, power is upped to the maximum: 350kW, i.e 470bhp!
The final is the ultimate round, with both cars and drivers maxed out. So the last fight of the day was certainly one with high expectations, and it delivered!
The finals saw a really close battle between Vergne and Evans, with both of them trading blows in each sector!
Ultimately, to the delight of all the home fans, it was Evans who triumphed.
Ultimately, the grid is all set up for the race at 3 pm today! The expectations are high for India’s first world championship street-race, and the first large-scale motorsport event in nearly a decade! We’ll be here from lights out to chequered-flag and beyond, so keep posted!
