Jake Dennis topped the second practice session of the Sao Paulo E-Prix, going fastest just as the checkered flag fell.
The Andretti driver’s best time of 1m09.617s was 0.545s quicker than Friday’s best time as the track continued to rubber in after a dusty start to proceedings on Friday.
Antonio Felix da Costa was second fastest, with Nissan’s Oliver Rowland in third, splitting the Portuguese driver and his TAG Heuer Porsche teammate Pascal Wehrlein as Porsche mirrored Nissan’s Friday performance by getting three cars with its drivetrains in the top five.
Jaguar TCS Racing’s Mitch Evans wound up fifth after getting caught in traffic on his final fast lap of the session, a lap that ought to have put him further up the order after he set a session-best time in the first sector.
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Robin Frijns was sixth for Jaguar customer Envision Racing and was the last of the drivers to break the 1m10s barrier. He finished the session one spot ahead of his teammate Sebastien Buemi.
Nico Mueller rebounded from a disappointing Friday to go eighth fastest. The Andretti driver has taken an extra tire following his brush with the wall on Friday. Every driver gets two full sets of tires for a single race, but is permitted to take one extra “joker” tire over the course of the season should it be needed. Mueller effectively used up his sole extra after just 16 minutes of the season had elapsed.
Maximilian Guenther and Dan Ticktum completed the top 10, ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Eric Vergne. David Beckmann was 13th, with the Mahindra duo of Nyck de Vries and Edoardo Mortara 14th and 15th respectively.
Nick Cassidy finished a lowly 16th, with NEOM McLaren’s Sam Bird – who had to contend with a front driveshaft problem – and Taylor Barnard next up. Zane Maloney, Norman Nato, and Lucas di Grassi rounded out the runners. Nato and di Grassi didn’t complete a fast lap on 350kW of power.