Diriyah E-Prix: Sims bags another pole for BMW

Sims logged an 1m11.476s lap, beating his pace-setting time of 1m14.563s from Friday by over three seconds.

The BMW driver held an advantage of 0.4s over Lucas di Grassi in the opening two sectors, before a slide on the exit of Turn 16 burdened Sims with a little bit of a disadvantage in the final sector - although he rocketed to the top of the timesheets regardless.

Sims’s time then absorbed a siege from the remaining runners, as Sebastien Buemi couldn’t quite overcome the British driver’s time, while DS Techeetah’s da Costa suffered two hefty slides during the second sector, tapping the wall on the exit of Turn 16 to all but end his chances of pole.

This is Sims’s third consecutive Formula E pole position - a current championship record.

Da Costa had set the fastest lap in the first part of qualifying, progressing from the third group and claiming his first point of the 2019-20 season.

Making an appearance in the second qualifying group, Sims was narrowly beaten in the first part of qualifying by Jerome d’Ambrosio, but both drivers - along with Mitch Evans - made it through to superpole.

Audi driver Di Grassi also progressed from the third group, while Buemi was the sole representative of the final group.

Buemi’s time in superpole was good enough for second, beating di Grassi and Evans to a front-row start in the race, while da Costa qualified behind d’Ambrosio after the slides on his final lap.

Race one winner Sam Bird converted a group one qualifying session effort into seventh, suggesting a subdued rate of track evolution compared to the session on the previous day.

Edoardo Mortara was the highest-placed Mercedes powertrain runner after qualifying ninth, unable to reprise his Friday role in the superpole shootout. 

Sims’ BMW teammate Maximilian Guenther claimed ninth, while race one runner-up Andre Lotterer completed the top 10, having appeared in the first group alongside Bird.

After hitting the wall in practice, 2018-19 Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne qualified 11th, having been offered a consolation berth in the fourth group following his steering rack-enforced retirement from the first race.

Nissan e.dams driver Oliver Rowland struggled in the first qualifying group, clocking in a lap over a second slower than his best effort in practice.

James Calado managed to make it out to qualifying after his Jaguar team repaired a driveshaft at the rear of his car following a practice error, just managing to stay off of the final row of the grid.

Nyck de Vries qualified last after losing over two seconds in the final two sectors, ending his session 21 places below his top-three qualifying position on Friday.

Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	27	Alexander Sims	Andretti Autosport	1'11.476
2	23	Sébastien Buemi	Nissan e.dams	1'11.696	0.220
3	11	Lucas di Grassi	Team Abt	1'11.784	0.308
4	20	Mitch Evans	Jaguar Racing	1'11.929	0.453
5	64	Jérôme d'Ambrosio	Mahindra Racing	1'12.093	0.617
6	13	Antonio Felix da Costa	Techeetah	1'14.134	2.658
7	2	Sam Bird	Virgin Racing	1'12.007	0.531
8	48	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi	1'12.008	0.532
9	28	Maximilian Gunther	Andretti Autosport	1'12.051	0.575
10	36	Andre Lotterer	Porsche Team	1'12.153	0.677
11	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'12.327	0.851
12	5	Stoffel Vandoorne	Mercedes	1'12.422	0.946
13	4	Robin Frijns	Virgin Racing	1'12.454	0.978
14	94	Pascal Wehrlein	Mahindra Racing	1'12.635	1.159
15	66	Daniel Abt	Team Abt	1'12.642	1.166
16	19	Felipe Massa	Venturi	1'12.656	1.180
17	22	Oliver Rowland	Nissan e.dams	1'12.660	1.184
18	3	Oliver Turvey	NIO Formula E Team	1'12.671	1.195
19	18	Neel Jani	Porsche Team	1'12.732	1.256
20	6	Brendon Hartley	Dragon Racing	1'13.182	1.706
21	33	Ma Qing Hua	NIO Formula E Team	1'13.205	1.729
22	51	James Calado	Jaguar Racing	1'13.430	1.954
23	7	Nico Müller	Dragon Racing	1'13.703	2.227
24	17	Nyck de Vries	Mercedes	1'14.082	2.606
View full results