The Formula E Season 9 rookie test took place today in Berlin, no less than a day after the double-header of Rounds Seven and Eight of the FE World Championship weekend. The teams put groups of mainly youngsters into their GEN3 cars to give them a taste of this season’s machinery and gain some experience of what it’s like around a Formula E circuit.
The morning session saw much better weather than the weekend, with countless laps racked up by the rookies. South African driver Sheldon van der Linde completed both the most laps and the fastest time around the track with 67, and the best time of a 1:05:814 for the Jaguar team, with ‘teammate’ Simon Evans finishing second bottom, 1.487 seconds off the top spot.
There was Formula One experience on track too, with ex-Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat finishing fourth in the morning for NIO, and Aston Martin reserve Felipe Drugovich down in twelfth for Maserati in the same session. The former not going as fast in the afternoon, finishing in ninth place, whilst the latter eventually topped the session.
The grid also saw an abundance of both current and previous Formula Two drivers who were enjoying some time in different cars. They consisted of Jehan Daruvala for Mahindra, Zane Maloney for Andretti, David Beckmann of Porsche, Jack Aitken with Envision, and a few others like Robert Shwartzman, Luca Ghiotto, and Drugovich of course.
The afternoon session’s top three was Drugovich, Victor Martins and Zach Maloney. The Brazilian was also fastest overall for the whole day of testing and was only two-tenths away from practice table-topper Maximillian Guenther at the weekend. An attractive lap time from him, considering it was in the same car.
The Formula E World Championship returns on the 6th of May for the Monaco E-Prix.