A breathless, bizarre and incident-packed Mexico City ePrix saw Lucas di Grassi pick up his first win of the season in the most unlikely of circumstances. An unusual-looking grid, further affected by penalties for Jérôme d'Ambrosio and super-pole winner Daniel Abt (both for incorrect tyre pressures) had NextEV's Oliver Turvey starting from the front, and DS Virgin's José María López alongside. Championship leader Sébastien Buemi could only reach 7th, and di Grassi back in 15th. Turvey made a clean getaway from the line, but there was immediately plenty of action taking place behind him. Nick Heidfeld overtook Jean-Éric Vergne in the run to the first corner to take third. Da Costa lost several places when he locked up while attempting to overtake Sam Bird, but managed to rejoin the race quickly. A concertina effect on a busy turn three saw several cars make contact. The most significant incident being Stephane Sarrazin rear-ending a near-stationary Lucas di Grassi. T...
I watched this week's Apprentice at half-past-three on Wednesday morning, having been staring at a computer screen for about a day. As a result, my memory of precisely what happened are slightly cloudy. The Guardian 's excellent " live blog " has handily filled in the gaps. Our six would-be apprentices were given the task of selling wealthy punters the chance to spend some time with some fantastic supercars. Apparently, this is a rapidly growing new business venture, although quite why struck me as a tad confusing. Surely the whole point of those things is to drive them – fast ? Unless you own your own racetrack, there's not much opportunity to do that on the UK's roads... It soon became clear, though, that the target audience was disgustingly rich grade-A posers. Depending on your point of view, poor/useless Lucinda was unfairly/fairly treated by her team-mates this week. Having said she wouldn't feel comfortable selling on her own (because she...
Changing weather conditions throughout the morning's practice sessions meant none of the drivers had much experience of a dry track. Steady rain overnight and into the early morning gave way to clear blue skies and a warm afternoon. Both Andretti cars were drawn in the first qualifying group. A short lap gives all teams the option of a "second chance" should something go wrong on their first (full-power) attempt, but everyone left it until the last possible opportunity to set a time. Jean-Éric Vergne set the fastest time with a 1:03.1, using the full width of the narrow corners only narrowly avoiding the walls. Robin Frijns' wasn't so lucky, and both he and Antonio Felix da Costa were considerably off the pace. Loic Duval of Dragon Racing and Pierre Gasly, standing in for championship leader Sébastien Buemi, made up the other places. Stephane Sarrazin was straight out of the blocks when the green lights started group two. He was able to set the second-fastest t...