Evans quickest in Sunday Monaco E-Prix practice

Mitch Evans topped Sunday morning’s only practice session at the Monaco E-Prix as Jaguar TCS Racing enjoyed a positive start to the final day of the event after struggles so far.

The session was the sole practice session on Sunday, thus was extended to 40 minutes from the 30 of both that ran on Saturday morning. While raindrops fell in the minutes leading up to its start, the session was ran in dry but cool conditions.

Nevertheless, lap times fell from Saturday’s two practices which took place in brighter and much warmer conditions. Evans’ best time of 1m 26.614 came in the final five minutes of the session, after it had been restarted due to a red flag after Dan Ticktum came to a stop at La Rascasse.

Jake Dennis went second fastest for Andretti, his best lap being just 0.036s off Evans’ benchmark. Nyck de Vries kept Mahindra at the sharp end of the field, going third fastest – he and his teammate Edoardo Mortara being split by TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein who completed the most laps in the session with 20.

Nick Cassidy ended the session sixth quickest in the other factory Jaguar, ahead of Maximilian Guenther and Stoffel Vandoorne, with Norman Nato and Sam Bird completing the top-10.

Saturday race winner Olvier Rowland was 11th fastest for Nissan, and experienced a brief foray into the runoff in the first corner early in the session.

Jake Hughes was 12 quickest, ahead of David Beckmann, Sebastien Buemi, and Jean-Eric Vergne. Antonio Felix da Costa in the second works Porsche was 16th, ahead of Nico Mueller in the similarly powered Andretti, with Lucas di Grassi and Taylor Barnard 18th and 19th respectively. Barnard had briefly gone to the top of the times, but had made time cutting the Nouvelle Chicane.

Ticktum wound up 20th after his stop – which was caused by a sensor being triggered after he hit a kerb, resulting in the powertrain being shut down –with Robin Frijns and Zane Maloney at the bottom of the timesheets.

The pair had a coming together at the Swimming Pool section, with Maloney running into the back of Frijns. Frijns was on a slow lap and Maloney on a flyer, but the Lola Yamaha Abt driver wasn’t seen on Envision Racing’s GPS meaning that they couldn’t warn Frijns of the faster car approaching.