Diriyah E-Prix: De Vries leads Mercedes 1-2 in second practice

De Vries set the early pace in the 30-minute afternoon session, his time of 1m10.535s putting him well clear of the top Nissan e.dams of Oliver Rowland.

The first red flag was waved with 17 minutes on the clock when the rear of Muller's Dragon Penske snapped going into Turn 7, and he hit the barriers rear-first and suffered heavy damage to the bodywork.

When practice resumed six minutes later, laptimes tumbled at a rapid rate, with a number of drivers breaking into 1m09s.

Rowland was the first driver to dip into the 1m08s, before de Vries put himself back on top with a time of 1m08.853s.

That was fractionally quicker than his Thursday's benchmark which was set in much cooler conditions during the night-time, and remained unbeaten after Robin Frijns brought out another red flag after crashing his Envision Virgin Racing with just two minutes to go.

Stoffel Vandoorne finished two tenths behind his teammate in second, while Venturi driver Edoardo Mortara's time of 1m08.836s effectively made it a one-two-three for Mercedes powertrains.

Rowland was shuffled down to fourth in the final order ahead of Porsche's Andre Lotterer, and despite a brush with the wall Sergio Sette Camara was a strong sixth for the Dragon Penske team that is starting the season with the same powertrain as last season.

Alex Lynn was Mahindra's top runner in seventh, half a second down on de Vries, while Sebastien Buemi was eighth in the second of the Nissan cars ahead of Mitch Evans (Jaguar) and Maximilian Gunther (BMW Andretti).

Sam Bird was 11th in his second practice outing with his new team Jaguar, while Frijns's previous lap of 1m09.539s was good enough for 12th despite his late crash in the session.

The two DS Techeetah cars were surprisingly off the pace with Antonio Felix da Costa and Jean-Eric Vergne finishing 18th and 20th respectively, although not all drivers were able to complete full power laps in the session.

Cla	Driver		Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Nyck de Vries		Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team	16	1'08.583
2	Stoffel Vandoorne		Mercedes-EQ Formula E Team	16	1'08.760	0.177
3	Edoardo Mortara		Venturi	16	1'08.836	0.253
4	Oliver Rowland		DAMS	16	1'08.887	0.304
5	Andre Lotterer		Porsche Team	16	1'08.955	0.372
6	Sergio Sette Camara		DRAGON / PENSKE AUTOSPORT	14	1'09.121	0.538
7	Alex Lynn		Mahindra Racing	16	1'09.195	0.612
8	Sébastien Buemi		DAMS	15	1'09.232	0.649
9	Mitch Evans		Jaguar Racing	15	1'09.398	0.815
10	Maximilian Gunther		Andretti Autosport	12	1'09.455	0.872
11	Sam Bird		Jaguar Racing	15	1'09.506	0.923
12	Robin Frijns		Virgin Racing	9	1'09.539	0.956
13	René Rast		Team Abt	14	1'09.743	1.160
14	Norman Nato		Venturi	15	1'09.808	1.225
15	Lucas di Grassi		Team Abt	13	1'09.919	1.336
16	Pascal Wehrlein		Porsche Team	15	1'10.046	1.463
17	Alexander Sims		Mahindra Racing	15	1'10.077	1.494
18	Antonio Felix da Costa		Techeetah	12	1'10.155	1.572
19	Oliver Turvey		NIO Formula E Team	14	1'10.341	1.758
20	Jean-Eric Vergne		Techeetah	10	1'10.425	1.842
21	Tom Blomqvist		NIO Formula E Team	14	1'10.640	2.057
22	Jake Dennis		Andretti Autosport	12	1'10.743	2.160
23	Nico Müller		DRAGON / PENSKE AUTOSPORT	8	1'11.111	2.528
24	Nick Cassidy		Virgin Racing	12	1'11.174	2.591
View full results