Gunther quickest, Buemi wins trial race as FE testing ends

Maximilian Günther leapfrogged Mahindra’s Pascal Wehrlein to top the timesheets for BMW as Formula E’s collective pre-season test came to a close on Thursday in Valencia.

After finishing fourth in the morning session on Thursday, Günther was able to jump up to P1 in the penultimate hour of the test with a fastest time of 1m15.087s.

The lap dethroned Wehrlein from top spot, leaving the Mahindra driver to settle for second place, 0.103s off the pace on his 25th birthday. Nico Muller put in an impressive display for Dragon to finish third ahead of Techeetah’s Antonio Felix da Costa and Jaguar’s Mitch Evans.

Gunther was the only driver to record an improvement in the afternoon session that was largely taken up by the second simulation race of the test, this time won by Sebastien Buemi as officials continued to experiment with energy reduction changes ahead of the coming season.

Buemi ended the day sixth-fastest overall for Nissan e.dams ahead of Alexander Sims in the second BMW, while Mitch Evans ended up seventh for Jaguar. Jerome d’Ambrosio wound up eighth for Mahindra ahead of reigning Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne in ninth as Felipe Massa rounded out the top 10 for Venturi.

The top 22 cars were covered by less than a second on Thursday. Porsche ended its maiden Formula E pre-season in P16 and P22 with Andre Lotterer and Neel Jani, with Mercedes matching its fellow newcomer closely through Stoffel Vandoorne in 17th and Nyck de Vries in 21st.

The 2019-20 Formula E season gets underway with the Ad Diriyah E-Prix in Saudi Arabia on November 22.