The 2024 Formula E season is officially underway, with McLaren’s Jake Hughes topping first practice in Mexico City before crashing out at Turn 1 moments later.
The red flag, the second of the session, brought an early end to proceedings with Hughes’s 1:14.364 topping Porche Formula E Team’s Pascal Wehrlein by 0.381 seconds.
Mitch Evans was the fastest of the Kiwis, in seventh and 0.621 seconds behind, while new Jaguar TCS Racing teammate Nick Cassidy was 13th, 0.917 seconds off Hughes.
As was expected, the new season and Mexican heat produced difficult track conditions at the start of the 30-minute session.
Maserati’s Maximilian Gunther was the first to find trouble, running wide on the final corner on the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez circuit and clipping the wall with his left rear before coming to a stop before the start-finish line.
This triggered the first red flag, and the delay resulted in the session being extended by 12 minutes.
As track conditions improved, so did the times, with Cassidy and Evans both spending time at or near the top of the leaderboard.
Neither would get a chance to set a final, representative time, with Hughes going fastest before immediately running into the Turn 1 barriers, potentially clipping the inside wall at the Turn 1 chicane and running straight into a wall.
The session would not restart, ending six minutes early with the Jaguar TCS Racing duo in their garages.
Formula E returns for a final practice session at 4.30 am Sunday (NZ time), ahead of qualifying at 4.30 am and the Mexico City E-Prix starting at 8.00 am.
All sessions will be shown live on Sky Sport 5.
Header Image: Formula E
