Nick Cassidy tops free practice one of the 2023 Cape Town E-Prix and we join Jaguar in their pit garage writes Brent van de Schyff.
It’s race day and the teams are furiously at work finessing the plans to extract the extra tenths needed to get the jump on the rest. We were invited to a bucket list opportunity to join the Jaguar team in the pit garage and listen on the radio talk between the driver and race engineer. You wouldn’t be mistaken by thinking this is more a spy or military exercise than a simple practice session involving race cars. But let me inform you that other teams are listening too and the racer/engineer pair are careful about what they say and anything of top secret value is communicated in a pre-arranged code language. It’s quite a wild experience to bear witness to it first hand.
Jaguar’s Sam Bird went P1 towards to the latter parts of the session by almost 0.5 seconds but that was short lived after Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy got the jump and topped the times with a 1.08.118s followed by Maserati MSG Racing’s Eduardo Mortara. NIO 333’s Dan Ticktum rounded the top three. The track is getting faster with more rubber being laid down and the drivers are taking full advantage of it. But that doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone as some have been struggling to find the grip. It’s always going to be a high risk high reward exchange.
Jaguar’s pair of Mitch Evans and Sam Bird looked racy completing the top 5 in P4 and P5 respectively. Bird has however a 5 place grid penalty after the incident in Hyderabad, which took his teammate out. After a conversation with both him and Mitch yesterday, this seems to have been put to bed and the pair are back out there doing what they do best. Professionals right?
Being with the team in the garage has sure offered a unique vantage point of just how much goes into a session, analysing data of not only you, but your teammate and also the competition. The energy is palpable.
Qualifying is at 11:40 and the 2023 Cape Town E-Prix2023 Cape Town E-Prix is at 16:00 this afternoon.
