Mortara fastest in FP1 for Venturi

Edoardo Mortara set the pace for Venturi in the opening practice session in Rome.

The Swiss driver set a 1m40.022s to go two-tenths clear of Jaguar’s Mitch Evans, and Mercedes’ Nyck de Vries.

Antonio Felix da Costa set the fourth quickest time for DS Techeetah ahead of Robin Frijns, who did the vast majority of the running for Envision Racing after Nick Cassidy spent over half the session in the pits with a technical issue.

Stoffel Vandoorne was sixth in the other Mercedes, ahead of Andre Lotterer in the first of the Porsches.

The top-ten was rounded out by Mahindra’s Alex Sims, Jaguar’s Sam Bird, and Dragon’s Sergio Sette Camara.

There was an incident towards the end of the session between Jean-Eric Vergne and Oliver Rowland at the Turn 12/13 chicane.

Rowland was going slowly to get back to the pits and ended up in the wall after Vergne, who was on a 250kw lap, attempted to get past on the brakes, with Rowland not realising where the DS Techeetah was.