X44 Vida Carbon Racing was the pacesetter as Extreme E’s Island X Prix got underway in Sardinia.
Cristina Gutierrez and Fraser McConnell’s combined four-lap time of 8m40.835s in the second practice session of the day was 7.22s quicker than Abt Cupra’s Klara Andersson and Sebastien Loeb — who is filling in for regular driver Nasser Al-Attiyah this weekend.
It was a marked improvement for both teams after a tricky morning on the 1.8-mile/2.9km — a session that is typically a non-representative affair as teams learn the course and experiment with setups — with X44’s opening practice ending early due to battery issues, and Abt Cupra’s car suffering with a sticking throttle pedal which was fixed during a lengthy driver change period.
However, Abt Cupra’s car was subsequently found to be under the minimum weight, disqualifying the team from the session. That moved Carl Cox Motorsport, featuring debutante Lia Block, to second in the afternoon. In the morning, the team was further down the order, registering the sixth-fastest session time overall, but Block set a time in sector three that remained quickest of all until Mattias Ekstrom bettered it in the last run of that session.
Andretti Altawkilat’s Catie Munnings and Timmy Hansen were third quickest, with GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing’s Amanda Sorensen and RJ Anderson fourth and JBXE’s Hedda Hosas and Andreas Bakkerud in fifth, 6.347s adrift of the Ganassi duo.
Championship leaders Veloce Racing were sixth after Molly Taylor struggled during her stint in the afternoon, noting that there was “something funny happening in the rear” over the team radio. Once Kevin Hansen took over the car for the team’s final two laps, he was nevertheless able to set the fastest single lap of the session.
Acciona Sainz (Laia Sanz and Mattias Ekstrom) rounded out the afternoon practice session, and NEOM McLaren’s Emma Gilmour and Tanner Foust initially being recorded ninth before Abt Cupra’s disqualification — given another bite of the cherry after their first run ended early with a puncture that caused subsequent suspension damage. But the team was ultimately disqualified too, for being underweight. It was the second time McLaren had fallen foul to weight rules, with it also being disqualified from the morning session.
NEOM McLaren sporting director Gary Paffett told RACER that the team had lost “a couple of kilos” from the car after stripping it down and cleaning it after the previous round, with the expectation that build-up during the session would bring it back up to weight. With that problem rectified for the second session, damage sustained during Gilmour’s run once again brought the car underweight.
Paffett stressed that it was “nothing out of our control, and we don’t foresee any problems during the competitive sessions.”
Rosberg X Racing’s Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky and Johan Kristoffersson were classified 10th and last in the afternoon after Ahlin-Kottulinsky slid into a rock towards the end of the second sector, breaking the car’s right-rear suspension. The team, however, had been in the mix in the morning, going fourth quickest in the opening practice session.
Island X Prix Free Practice 2
- X44 Vida Carbon Racing 8m40.835s
- Carl Cox Motorsport +9.013s
- Andretti Altawkilat +9.066s
- GMC Hummer EV Chip Ganassi Racing +10.471s
- JBXE +16.818s
- Veloce Racing +42.867s
- Acciona Sainz +51.052s
- Rosberg X Racing, No time
Abt Cupra, DQ
NEOM McLaren, DQ