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Nissan’s Oliver Rowland was the quickest guy on track for the final practice session of the season, as he looks to give his home fans something to cheer about. Yesterday’s race winner and now championship leader Pascal Wehrlein (TAG Heuer Porsche) was second, followed by the DS PENSKE of Jean-Eric Vergne.
Maximilian Guenther was fourth for Maserati MSG Racing, and will hope to bounce back after the disappointment of suffering a failure when running in second yesterday. Robin Frijns was back out on track after a trip to hospital on Saturday after a race-ending crash, and rounded out of the top five – just 0.075s separating first to Frijns.
However, the big news was Nick Cassidy suffering problems with his car and failing to set a lap after issues with the brakes on his Jaguar TCS Racing.
The final free practice session around the ExCel this season brought with it plenty of talking points.
Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns was back on track this morning, after concerns about his hand after yesterday’s E-Prix. The Dutchman hit the Andretti of Jake Dennis at the beginning of the race, sending him into the wall and snapping his steering. After previously breaking his hand after a crash in Mexico City last season, there was concern he had done it again but Envision Team Principal Sylvain Filippi confirmed they had been for X-Rays and it was mainly just swelling which had gone down a lot.
Nyck de Vries briefly brought out the yellow flags after his Mahindra Racing car came to a stop on track, but was able to get going again.
But perhaps the biggest story of the session was the troubles for championship contender, Nick Cassidy. The Jaguar TCS Racing driver was leading the Drivers’ title fight going into this weekend, but a disappointing qualifying yesterday and only finishing seventh means he now moves to third in the standings.
The Kiwi sat in the garage for the majority of FP3, after complaining about the brakes in his Jaguar. It’s understood that the team made some modifications overnight, but clearly this hasn’t helped the situation and resulted in Cassidy being the only car not to set a lap time. The 29-year-old did get out on track, but wasn’t able to complete the lap.
He eventually got out of the car, clearly frustrated as he threw his gloves to the ground before entering his driver room.
In the end, it was Nissan’s Oliver Rowland who went top of the timesheets in the final few minutes with a 1m10.127s.