Vandoorne on pole for Berlin, Evans leads title contenders

Mercedes EQ’s Stoffel Vandoorne claimed pole position for the season-ending Berlin E-Prix.

This is Vandoorne’s third pole of the season. The Mercedes driver had topped the overall standings in the group stages of qualifying, and repeated the feat when it was time for his stint in Superpole, with Vandoorne denying title contenders four valuable points.

He set a lap time of 1m06.794s toput him on pole, and was closely followed by Oliver Rowland just 0.1 seconds behind him.

Mitch Evans will start in third place and Alexander Sims will be starting next to him in the second row from the fourth position. 

Tom Blomqvist is not a common name to see at the front of the grid, but the Brit had a strong qualifying performance that put him in fifth place.

Norman Nato had made it to Super Pole but a technical issue impeded him to do his stint. He will be starting from the sixth spot on the grid.

The top 10 was completed by Andre Lotterer, Sebastien Buemi, Jake Dennis, and Pascal Wehrlein.

Championship leader Nyck de Vries will start from P13 while his closest title contender, Edoardo Mortara, will be just two places ahead of him in the starting grid, having qualified in P11.

Evans is the highest-placed title contender on the grid with fourth place, with the Kiwi currently lying five points behind championship leader de Vries. Race 1 winner Lucas di Grassi, who can also win the Championship, was 17th after missing out on Superpole by the smallest of margins.

Heading into Race 2, 13 drivers can still win the first ever Formula E World Championship title. BMW i Andretti Motorsport’s Maximilian Guenther had been in contention prior to qualifying, but needed bonus points from the session to stay in the fight.