Diriyah E-Prix: Rowland remains on top in second practice

Having already led the way in the opening session on Thursday night, Rowland picked up from where he left off and set a 1m08.957s late on in the session, which managed to withstand the flurry of laps towards its climax.

Envisions Robin Frijns made a bid for the fastest time towards the end of the session, but a lock-up and traffic ahead put a damper on his lap after posting the fastest opening sector.

High track evolution towards the end of the session brought the laptimes below the 70-second range for the first time this weekend, as the dust that had pervaded the circuit continued to be cleared by running on track.

Mitch Evans was the first to beat Rowland's timesheet-topper from FP1, posting a 1m10.479s and then taking two-hundredths of a second out of his own time - both enough to see off a full-power effort from Jean-Eric Vergne.

Vergne's DS Techeetah teammate Antonio Felix da Costa then beat Evans and was momentarily quickest before Pascal Wehrlein was the first to dive below the 1m10s to log a 1m09.973s.

Shaking off his FP1 incident, Nyck de Vries made up for lost time and beat Wehrlein's lap to sit atop the order, but his Mercedes stablemate Stoffel Vandoorne began the final 10 minutes as the fastest driver - going nearly two-tenths faster than de Vries.

Venturi's Edoardo Mortara, also propelled by the Mercedes powertrain, was able to wrest control of the session from Vandoorne - but was immediately beaten by Dragon Penske's Sergio Sette Camara.

Nick Cassidy was next to pick up the baton, bringing the times closer to the 1m09s mark, before handing off to Sam Bird - before Jake Dennis set a pleasing 1m09.000s.

Although Dennis had hoped to remain atop the standings, Rowland threw in his fastest effort with about a minute to spare - with Bird also getting into the 1m08s by the close of the session.

Dennis remained third ahead of da Costa, while Frijns' lock-up kept him in fifth place, over a tenth ahead of Wehrlein.

Vergne was seventh quickest ahead of Cassidy, as new Nissan e.dams recruit Maximilian Gunther placed ninth ahead of Andretti rookie Oliver Askew.

Formula E's all-new qualifying system follows, which will use a knockout format to set the grid for the opening Diriyah E-Prix race.

Diriyah E-Prix - Second practice results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	30	Oliver Rowland	Mahindra Racing	1'08.957
2	10	Sam Bird	Jaguar Racing	1'08.972	0.015
3	27	Jake Dennis	Avalanche Andretti Formula E	1'09.000	0.043
4	13	Antonio Felix da Costa	Techeetah	1'09.048	0.091
5	4	Robin Frijns	Virgin Racing	1'09.070	0.113
6	94	Pascal Wehrlein	Porsche Team	1'09.172	0.215
7	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	Techeetah	1'09.208	0.251
8	37	Nick Cassidy	Virgin Racing	1'09.255	0.298
9	22	Maximilian Gunther	DAMS	1'09.413	0.456
10	28	Oliver Askew	Avalanche Andretti Formula E	1'09.502	0.545
11	7	Sergio Sette Camara	Dragon Racing	1'09.508	0.551
12	48	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi	1'09.518	0.561
13	11	Lucas di Grassi	Venturi	1'09.541	0.584
14	9	Mitch Evans	Jaguar Racing	1'09.656	0.699
15	36	Andre Lotterer	Porsche Team	1'09.718	0.761
16	5	Stoffel Vandoorne	Mercedes	1'09.740	0.783
17	23	Sébastien Buemi	DAMS	1'09.806	0.849
18	17	Nyck de Vries	Mercedes	1'09.906	0.949
19	33	Dan Ticktum	NIO Formula E Team	1'09.962	1.005
20	29	Alexander Sims	Mahindra Racing	1'10.157	1.200
21	3	Oliver Turvey	NIO Formula E Team	1'10.520	1.563
22	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	Dragon Racing	1'10.590	1.633
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