Jakarta E-Prix: Gunther beats Dennis to claim second straight FE pole

Having been unbeaten over a single lap all weekend, Gunther again emerged as the fastest driver of all in Sunday’s qualifying as he set a stellar lap of 1m07.753s to defeat Dennis by over half a second in the finals.

Gunther was quicker than Dennis from the get-go in their duel, immediately establishing a 0.134s advantage before steadily building that gap over the remainder of the lap.

By the middle sector, Gunther’s time was already 0.479s up on Dennis, and he eventually claimed his second pole of the Jakarta weekend - and his FE career - by an astonishing 0.523s.

The German driver had earlier topped the Group B session to progress into the duels stage, where he upped his pace even further to became the first driver to break the 1m08s barrier this weekend.

That allowed him an easy passage over DS Penske’s Stoffel Vandoorne into the semis, where he got the better of team-mate Edoardo Mortara by 0.134s to put himself in the finals.

Meanwhile, Dennis made it to the finals after claiming a narrow 0.001s victory over Jaguar’s Mitch Evans in the semis. The British driver had fallen as much as 0.138s behind Evans in the middle part of the track, but he turned the deficit around with an incredible final sector to secure a spot on the front row.

Dennis was previously the fastest driver in Group A and he also breezed through quarter finals, outpacing McLaren’s Jake Hughes by well over six tenths in what was the most one-sided duel of the day.

Evans will start the race from third on the grid behind polesitter Gunther and Dennis, putting him in a strong position to bounce back from his DNF on Saturday that left him 34 points off the championship lead.

Mortara will line up fourth in the second of the two Maserati cars, with Vandoorne set to start fifth in the DS Penske.

Saturday winner and Porsche driver Pascal Wehrlein will take the start from sixth position, having lost out to Mortara in their semi-final contest, while Nissan’s Sacha Fenestraz and McLaren’s Jake Hughes will share the fourth row of the grid.

DS Penske’s Jean-Eric Vergne, who missed out on a spot in the duels by just 0.001s to his team-mate Vandoorne, will be next up on the grid in ninth.

Vergne will be joined on the fifth row of the grid by championship leader Nick Cassidy (Envision), who was again eliminated in the group stages and will hav to start four places behind his title rival Wehrlein.

Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa locked up on his final lap in Group B, leaving him 11th on the grid for the second race of the weekend.

Jaguar driver Sam Bird struggled even more in qualifying to end up 14th, behind Nissan’s Norman Nato and the second Envision car of Sebastien Buemi.

Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Driver	Time	Gap
1	7	Maximilian Gunther	1'07.753
2	27	Jake Dennis	1'08.338	0.585
3	9	Mitch Evans	1'08.077	0.324
4	48	Edoardo Mortara	1'08.443	0.690
5	1	Stoffel Vandoorne	1'08.289	0.536
6	94	Pascal Wehrlein	1'08.450	0.697
7	23	Sacha Fenestraz	1'08.664	0.911
8	5	Jake Hughes	1'08.962	1.209
9	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	1'08.603	0.850
10	37	Nick Cassidy	1'08.623	0.870
11	13	Antonio Felix da Costa	1'08.609	0.856
12	17	Norman Nato	1'08.681	0.928
13	16	Sébastien Buemi	1'08.733	0.980
14	10	Sam Bird	1'08.792	1.039
15	3	Sergio Sette Camara	1'08.796	1.043
16	58	René Rast	1'08.805	1.052
17	51	Nico Müller	1'08.924	1.171
18	36	David Beckmann	1'08.840	1.087
19	11	Lucas di Grassi	1'09.048	1.295
20	33	Dan Ticktum	1'08.904	1.151
21	8	Roberto Merhi	1'09.489	1.736
22	4	Robin Frijns	1'08.937	1.184
View full results