Vandoorne heads field in debut practice

Stoffel Vandoorne topped his first ever official Formula E practice session following heavy delays and a reduced amount of track time ahead of qualifying.

A practice session of 35 minutes was announced after the initial cancellations of FP1 and FP2, with the practice that did eventually happen leaving the drivers with very little track time.

Most of the drivers were already in their cars except by Jean-Eric Verge who chose to go out and see for himself that it had just started to rain again.

The drivers started to step out of their cars to talk to their engineers. It was easy to see the frustration in the garages with all the time that has been lost this morning in Ad Diriyah.

After many delays, the drivers were informed that they’d have to do three laps behind the safety car at reduced speed before being allowed to continue at full speed.

Edoardo Mortara seemed to have brake issues and hit the tech pro barriers, the red flag prompting drivers to return to the pit lane with about ten minutes left on the clock when the green flag was waved again.

The images suggest some problem caused in the car, the front wing was damaged as well as the back but it didn’t look too serious and the Venturi should be ready in time for qualifying.

At the time the red flag came out, Sam Bird was in first place with a lap time of 1:23.445s but the times started to tumble and Vandoorne brought the pace down to 1:18.868s ahead of Bird and Nissan e.dams’ Sebastien Buemi.

Qualifying will get underway at 11:25am local time.