De Vries fastest again in disrupted second practice session

Nyck de Vries was fastest for Mercedes in a disrupted second practice session before qualifying in Ad-Diriyah.

Nico Mueller brought out the first red flag shortly before the mid-point of the 30 minute session. He lost the back end of his Dragon Racing car going into Turn 7 and was unable to get going again.

When the session resumed, roughly half the field set about qualifying simulations, with the others waiting until the closing stages of the session.

Those that left it late were disrupted by the second red flag of the day, as Robin Frijns crashed his Virgin run car at Turn 13 in the final minutes. He hit the tec-pro barrier with the rear before hitting the wall with the front-right. The red flag brought an early end to hte session. 

De Vries’ 1m08.583s was enough to see him ahead of his teammate, Stoffel Vandoorne and the Mercedes powered Venturi of Edoardo Mortara.

Oliver Rowland was fourth fastest for Nissan and Andre Lotterer rounded out the top five for Porsche.

Sergio Sette Camara was sixth quickest in the other Dragon Racing entry ahead of Mahindra’s Alex Lynn, Nissan’s Sebastien Buemi, Jaguar’s Mitch Evans with Maximillian Guenther rounding out the top-ten for BMW.

Sam Bird was the eleventh quickest for Jaguar ahead of Frijns, Rene Rast in the Audi, Norman Nato, who was the fastest rookie for Venturi and Lucas di Grassi was fifteenth in the other Audi.

Pascal Wehrlein was sixteenth in the second of the Porsche’s ahead of Alexander Sims in the Mahindra, Antonio Felix Da Costa in the DS Techeetah, Oliver Turvey in the NIO and Jean-Eric Vergne in the other DS TEcheetah entry.

Tom Blomqvist was twenty-first in the other NIO ahead of BMW’s Jake Dennis, Mueller and Nick Cassidy, who rounded out the field for Envision Virgin.