Sébastien Buemi has taken pole position of the Marrakech ePrix after a qualifying session with some incidents that have caused that some drivers have been unable to complete a lap. Sam Bird will start second and Felix Rosenqvist third.
Qualifying began with a new format, in which group order was determined by championship position, so the last five, Tom Blomqvist, José María López, Jerome D’Ambrosio, Lucas Di Grassi and André Lotterer were the group 1 drivers. The Brazilian Audi driver was the quickest of the five, followed by López, Blomqvist, D’Ambrosio and Lotterer. His time was, however, a bit slower than the ones set this morning.
On the second group, Buemi was the fastest, but he was only able to be in third provisional place, behind Di Grassi and López. Alex Lynn and Luca Filippi finished the session in provisional fourth and fifth places, respectively, while Nico Prost and Maro Engel finished far from superpole places.
The top 5 on the standings were the five drivers in group 3. Felix Rosenqvist, race 2 winner in Hong Kong, moved up to first place on his first lap. On the last lap, Nick Heidfeld, who hadn’t set a fast lap, crashed into the wall and also avoided Edoardo Mortara to do a lap. Sam Bird was fifth and Jean-Éric Vergne ninth.
The last group was formed by the two Jaguars, the driver who had set the fastest lap on FP2, Daniel Abt; and the remaining NIO and Andretti cars. The session was slightly delayed due to the Heidfeld accident. When the time had ran out, only Nelson Piquet and Mitch Evans had finished a lap and were 7th and 8th respectively. Then, Antonio Felix Da Costa crashed and caused a red flag.
Despite this circumstance, Oliver Turvey and Daniel Abt were given and extra attempt and moved up and qualified tenth and eighth respectively. Rosenqvist, Di Grassi, López, Buemi and Bird made it to superpole.
On the superpole, Bird set a 1:21.6, which would probably be beaten. The next driver already beat the British, as Buemi finished his lap 3 tenths ahead. López set a disappointing 1:21.3. But Di Grassi, who was the fastest in sector one, made a mistake on the second and was dropped to the last place. Rosenqvist set a 1:21.1 to qualify third.
With that, Buemi takes his first Pole of the season and seems to have recovered from the awful weekend he had in Hong Kong. Bird will start next to him in second place, with Rosenqvist and a surprising López in the second row.