Yahoo Autos Veloce leads opening Scotland Extreme E practice
E.ON NEXT Veloce Racing set the pace in practice as Extreme E returned to Scotland for the Hydro X Prix.
Molly Taylor and Kevin Hansen’s combined four-lap time of 8m58.590s was 1.728s quicker than Klara Andersson and Timo Scheider’s SUN Minimeal team in Friday afternoon’s second practice session. Hansen also completed a clean sweep of the fastest sector times for the day, with his final lap being the fastest single lap of the day as well at 1m42.651s.
Andretti Altawkilat’s Catie Munnings and Timmy Hansen topped Friday morning’s largely inconsequential first practice session, and were third-quickest overall, 2.677s off Veloce, while NEOM McLaren was classified fourth.
Cristina Gutierrez and Mattias Ekstrom had taken the team to the top of the timesheets in the afternoon, but a 15-second penalty for a Switch Zone infringement — where Ekstrom was deemed to have put the car into gear before the minimum switch time had elapsed — dropped them down the final order.
Reigning champions and current points leaders Rosberg X Racing (Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky and Johan Kristoffersson) completed the top five, 13.457s off the top spot, and with a 10s penalty for dropping a flag at Waypoint 20.
JBXE, using a new car for this weekend, was sixth fastest, the combination of the team’s regular male driver Andreas Bakkerud and new signing Amanda Sorensen combining for a time of 9m22.354s in the afternoon, 23.764s off first.
Legacy Motor Club’s Gray Leadbetter and Patrick O’Donovan ended the day seventh quickest, with Acciona Sainz’s Laia Sanz and Fraser McConnell — winners of the second race of the season at the Desert X Prix in Saudi Arabia back in February — languishing in eighth after a pair of penalties.
Sanz got 10 seconds for downing a flag at Waypoint 23, while McConnell got an additional five seconds for subsequently missing the same waypoint during his two-lap run. mcConnell was also hit with a €350 fine after he was caught exceeding the 30kph speed limit from the stop control point back to the Switch Zone by 14kph. Scheider was also judged to have sped in the same zone, albeit by only 6kph, resulting in him being fined €150.
