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After looking rapid in the Free Practice sessions in Mexico City, they only made the qualifying Duels today, when Vandoorne got through in the third round of the new GEN3 era.
"You can be quick in practice, but you gotta be quick in qualifying, right?" Team Principal Jay Penske stated after the reigning Formula E champion got his DS PENSKE into the final eight.
"The guys worked awfully hard overnight to make sure we got everything out of the car. We tested 100 things. If I tell you the amount of things that were tested in this last practice session. Tney've worked on everything; every little, small gain we could find, we worked on. Really proud of all the efforts the engineering team did overnight."
Penske also went on to say the team had "high expectations of getting both cars in the Duels", but unfortunately for them, Vergne will be starting in 16th.
For Vandoorne, he couldn't set a quicker time than Envision Racing's Sebastien Buemi - yesterday's Julius Baer Pole Position holder. He'll start today's CORE Diriyah E-Prix Round 3 from eighth, but he seems optimistic that he can make up several positions, as we saw from drivers on the grid in Friday's race.
"Race performance has actually been pretty good, to be honest," the Season 8 champ continued. "We're starting a little bit higher up, and we've seen the Porsches being able to overtake yesterday, so hopefully, we can reproduce something that they did.
"It's really important for us to learn and get a couple of points on the board, so we need a good one."
So far, Vandoorne only has a single championship point to his name this year after a P10 result in Mexico City. His teammate, Vergne, finished in seventh in yesterday's E-Prix, leaving him with six points and currently 10th in the standings.