Buemi fastest as Porsche miss Hyderabad FP1

Sebastien Buemi tops the order in a delayed first free practice session ahead of the Hyderabad E-Prix. 

After a 50-minute delay to the start of the session, and heavy crash for Pascal Wehrlein brought out the red flag and further truncated running. 

It was an off-track issue that delayed Formula E’s first official session in India. Local authorities were resolving an unspecified operational issue on the roads around the track, causing the extended delay. 

When the session did get underway, most of the field immediately headed onto the dust-covered circuit. Porsche Formula E Team’s Pascal Wehrlein was amongst those. Three minutes into the session, Wehrlein hit the wall at turn 18 hard, bringing out the red flags. He reported on the radio that the throttle became stuck open.  

He was able to walk away from the crash, but the car could not be returned to the pit lane during the session. With Porsche limited on how much investigating they could do without the car, both the works team and customers Andretti made the choice to keep the remaining three cars in the pits for FP1. 

There were roughly 20 minutes left on the clock when the session went green again.  

Both Edoardo Mortara and Dan Ticktum spent most of the session at the sharp end of the timing screen, but the two drivers came together on track. Ticktum was running ahead of Mortara on track when the Maserati MSG Racing driver hit the back of his NIO 333 Racing car. The incident caused minor damage but is being investigated by the stewards. 

It was an otherwise clean session, with Sebastien Buemi taking the top spot from Stoffel Vandoorne with his final lap of the session. 

Buemi managed a time of 1m15.088s, 0.181s ahead of Vandoorne in second.  

Sergio Sette Camara briefly held P1 shortly before the chequered flag fell but was knocked down to P3, ahead of Sam Bird, Lucas Di Grassi and Mitch Evans. 

After setting the pace early on, Mortara finished FP1 seventh, with Jean-Eric Vergne separating himself and team-mate Maximillian Guenther. Nick Cassidy completed the top 10.