Shanghai E-Prix: Evans tops FP1 as software issue causes lengthy stoppage

The Jaguar driver topped the 30-minute session with a 1m13.215s, which was red-flagged after only five minutes had been completed when several cars came to a halt on track.

This included both Porsches of Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Felix da Costa, both ERT’s of Sergio Sette Camara and Dan Ticktum, as well as Mahindra’s Nyck de Vries.

All five cars had to be recovered back to the pits on the back of a flatbed truck, with Ticktum reporting that his issue was related to the brakes and a software issue.

Andretti team principal, Roger Griffiths, said: “We have to look at the common parts on the car and it appears that all of the cars have stopped with some battery issue.

“We do know that there was a software update between Berlin and coming here. When we arrived here the [battery supplier] WAE engineers were updating the cars, so I suspect something has gone astray in their software update or maybe there’s a bug in it.

“So they’re going through trying to ascertain what truly happened and perhaps the solution will be to roll back to the last known version of software that everybody ran successfully in Berlin.

Shanghai International Circuit (Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images)

“It hasn’t affected us yet, but nothing to say if we’d gone out one more lap, we wouldn’t all have stopped out on the track.

“I think it’s a case of a bit of luck and we were one of a few cars that completed a push lap.

“It didn’t affect us, but it could be right on the cusp of tripping over and then you’ve got 22 cars stopped out on the track and we all look a bit silly.”

After a delay of nearly 50 minutes and after all cars underwent a software update, the session resumed for 25 minutes around the Shanghai International Circuit, which plays host to Formula E for the first time this weekend.

Evans moved to the top of the times in the final minutes, leaving the Kiwi just 0.025s clear of Andretti’s Norman Nato and DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne.

Evans’ team-mate and championship leader Nick Cassidy finished 11th, while McLaren’s Sam Bird claimed 16th in his first outing since his return from a broken hand.

All five drivers that caused the red flag were able to participate in the session, with da Costa the best placed in sixth.

Main Information Additional Data Driver Info

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Main Information
Cla	Driver	#		Laps	Time	Interval	km/h
1	M. Evans Jaguar Racing	9		18	1'13.215		0.000
2	N. Nato Andretti Formula E	17		21	+0.025 1'13.240	0.025	0.000
3	J. Vergne DS Penske	25		18	+0.059 1'13.274	0.034	0.000
4	J. Hughes McLaren	5		18	+0.066 1'13.281	0.007	0.000
5	O. Rowland Nissan e.Dams	22		19	+0.072 1'13.287	0.006	0.000
6	A. Felix da Costa Porsche Team	13		20	+0.137 1'13.352	0.065	0.000
7	D. Ticktum ERT Formula E Team	33		18	+0.177 1'13.392	0.040	0.000
8	R. Frijns Envision Racing	4		21	+0.203 1'13.418	0.026	0.000
9	P. Wehrlein Porsche Team	94		19	+0.221 1'13.436	0.018	0.000
10	L. di Grassi Team Abt	11		19	+0.242 1'13.457	0.021	0.000
11	N. Cassidy Jaguar Racing	37		20	+0.279 1'13.494	0.037	0.000
12	N. Müller Team Abt	51		19	+0.291 1'13.506	0.012	0.000
13	M. Gunther Maserati Racing	7		20	+0.306 1'13.521	0.015	0.000
14	J. Dennis Andretti Formula E	1		21	+0.308 1'13.523	0.002	0.000
15	N. de Vries Mahindra Racing	21		17	+0.315 1'13.530	0.007	0.000
16	S. Bird McLaren	8		19	+0.343 1'13.558	0.028	0.000
17	S. Vandoorne DS Penske	2		19	+0.425 1'13.640	0.082	0.000
18	E. Mortara Mahindra Racing	48		18	+0.426 1'13.641	0.001	0.000
19	S. Buemi Envision Racing	16		20	+0.505 1'13.720	0.079	0.000
20	J. Daruvala Maserati Racing	18		20	+0.539 1'13.754	0.034	0.000
21	S. Fenestraz Nissan e.Dams	23		19	+0.587 1'13.802	0.048	0.000
22	S. Sette Camara ERT Formula E Team	3		19	+0.591 1'13.806	0.004	0.000
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