Vergne fastest for Techeetahposted in FE24 | 08 | 2016
FORMULA E NEWCOMERS, Techeetah, immediately demonstrated they are likely to be a force this season when they set a new lap record in testing at Donington Park.
Former F1 driver Jean-Eric Vergne clocked a best time of 1min 29.634secs in his Renault-powered electric racer, leading a trio of drivers under the best time from testing last year.
Behind Vergne, Mahindra's rookie Felix Rosenqvist (1m29.719s) and Renault e.dams' reigning FE champion Sebastien Buemi (1m29.765s) filled the other top two positions on the timesheet. All three quickest times were set in the morning session.
“Today was really good considering we haven’t been driving at all this summer, while other teams have covered a lot of mileage,” Vergne said.
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“I’m really pleased how the day went - we went through many things and we still need to catch-up compared to the other teams to understand the new powertrain but the team have done a really good job. The pure performance already seems to be there!”
Like Buemi in the Renault factory team, Techeetah is powered by the same Renault Z.E.16 powertrain. demonstrating the potential of the package, Vergne also clocked the fastest time of anyone at 170kW, the maximum power output in race trim.
Daniel Abt set the pace in the afternoon session and his 1m30.192s was the fourth best time for the day overall.
Championship newcomers, Jaguar, completed another 69 laps, with Mitch Evans taking over from Alex Lynn alongside Adam Carroll.
Kiwi Evans, who is advised by Mark Webber, had just posted his best lap of the session, a 1m31.267s, when the Jaguar stopped — for the first time, on-track, during testing — just after the start-finish line.
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Jim McGill