Lopez sets fastest time during Santiago FE practice
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Jose Maria Lopez set the fastest time across both practice sessions ahead of the third race of the 2018/19 Formula E season in Santiago.
The Dragon driver set a lap time of 1m08.194s in the final four minutes of the 30-minute long second practice session, beating Lucas Di Grassi’s 1m08.630s lap that topped free practice one.
During that session Lopez finished down in 17th, with his team-mate Maximilian Gunther only managing to finish 19th before being the third slowest driver of the grid in second free practice.
Di Grassi managed to also finish third in the second free practice session, with his last-minute lap splitting the two Virgin Racing drivers – Robin Frijns and Sam Bird – in the timings, who were both consistently quick throughout both sessions.
While Frijns was spotted drifting his car at one point during the opening session before ending up finishing fourth behind Bird, he was quicker than his team-mate in the second session and was within one-tenth of a second behind Lopez.
The pair were only beaten in practice one by Pascal Wehrlein, with the Mahindra driver also not too far behind them in the second session after he went fifth fastest.
His team-mate Jerome D’Ambrosio, who leads the drivers’ championship heading into the Santiago E-Prix, was only seventh fastest overall across both sessions behind the Jaguar or Mitch Evans in sixth overall.
BMW’s Alexander Sims was eighth fastest in the second session, although his lap was 0.030s slower than Di Grassi’s during the first session of the day.
His team-mate Antonio Felix Da Costa rounded off the top 10 for free practice two with Nissan e.dams’ Oliver Rowland finishing ahead of him in ninth.
The Nissan team had to work hard in between the two practice sessions to get Sebastien Buemi’s car fixed after the Swiss driver crashed within the first 15 minutes of on-track action.
He managed to get on track at the start of free practice two, although he was only able to go 15th fastest behind Daniel Abt, NIO’s Oliver Turvey and Techeetah team-mates Jean-Eric Vergne and Andre Lotterer.
