(Motorsport-Total.com) – Qualifying for Saturday’s Formula E race in New York was a razor-thin affair: In the end, Envision driver Nick Cassidy prevailed by a tiny 0.008 seconds and started from pole position.
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Nick Cassidy secured pole for Saturday’s race in New York
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Cassidy prevailed against Mercedes driver Stoffel Vandoorne in an exciting qualifying session. Before that, the New Zealander knocked out Jaguar driver Sam Bird in the quarterfinals and Porsche driver Pascal Wehrlein in the semifinals in the knockout phase.
“The track was constantly changing, that was the key. You had to deal with that. I’m just happy to have a good qualifying session. This year has been tough for me so far. In Marrakech it felt like we had the spear turned around and understood things. Proving that today was important,” says Cassidy on ‘ran’.
“Second row of the grid, a good qualifying”, Porsche driver Wehrlein sums up his qualifying at ‘ran’. “Those were difficult conditions. The track was different every lap. In the end it was close to get into the final. In retrospect you always think you could have found the tenth. But I’m still quite satisfied.”
Three Formula E title aspirants fail in the group phase
Although Vandoorne narrowly missed out on pole position for the race, he still lands a big point in the title fight. The Belgian is the only driver of the foursome leading the general classification to survive the group stage.
Overall leader Edoardo Mortara dropped out of Group A in fifth place. Before that, the session in the first group had to be interrupted with the red flag. The trigger was an accident by Sergio Sette Camara in the Dragon Penske car.
In the other group, Mitch Evans was seventh and Jean-Eric Vergne eighth. Both reacted too late to the onset of rain and were therefore no longer able to set a competitive time. In addition, Wehrlein’s teammate Andre Lotterer was eliminated in the group stage.
This means that Vandoorne will start the race from among the title contenders with clearly the best starting position. The Mercedes driver progressed as third in the first group and, on the way to the finale, first knocked out Alexander Sims in the Mahindra and Venturi driver Lucas di Grassi.
The Saturday Formula E race in New York starts in the evening at 19:00 CEST. Another qualifying session and a race are on the program on Sunday.
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