JAKARTA E-PRIX: MASERATI'S GUNTHER BEATS DENNIS TO MAIDEN POLE

and Saturday morning, Gunther was also untouchable in qualifying as he defeated Andretti’s Jake Dennis with a time of 1m08.141s.

Gunther was able to pull an advantage of 0.368s in the early stages of the final, with Dennis only fractionally closing the gap in the track's second sector.

The gap between the two swelled to 0.423s at one stage and, although it came down again as they completed the final sector, Gunther was still able to secure pole position with a comfortable margin of 0.341s.

The 25-year-old had previously gone head-to-head with team-mate Edoardo Mortara in the quarter finals, Gunther winning that duel by three tenths of a second.

This set him up against Pascal Wehrlein in the semis, but despite the Porsche driver enjoying a renaissance after a difficult run of results, Gunther was able to get the better of his fellow German and guarantee himself a front row spot.

Meanwhile, Dennis had eased through quarter finals with a half-a-second advantage over Abt’s Robin Frijns, before defeating Jean-Eric Vergne (DS Penske) in the semis by over three tenths of a second to earn a place in the finals.

Wehrlein will start from third on the grid behind Dennis, with Vergne and his team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne due to line up fourth and fifth.

Mortara will join Vandoorne on the third row of the grid, with Frijns an excellent seventh for Abt after progressing to the duels for the first time in dry conditions in 2023.

Jake Dennis, Andretti Autosport, Porsche 99 X Electric Gen3

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

McLaren’s Rene Rast will start from eighth as the slowest of the duel runners, while Nico Muller proved his team-mate Frijns’ performance wasn’t a fluke as he qualified ninth - the Swiss securing only his second top-10 start of the season.

Both Envision cars were eliminated in the group stages, with championship leader Nick Cassidy qualifying 10th and team-mate Sebastien Buemi ending up three places further down in 13th.

Last year’s winner Mitch Evans also failed to progress to the duels, the Jaguar driver finishing sixth in the group to end up 11th on the grid behind Kiwi compatriot Cassidy.

Another high-profile driver to struggle in qualifying was Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa, who will take the start from 15th after finishing eighth in his group.

Sam Bird ended up 16th, five places behind his team-mate Evans.

Jakarta E-Prix Qualifying results:

Cla#DriverTimeGap 
17 Maximilian Gunther 1'08.141
227 Jake Dennis 1'08.482 0.341
394 Pascal Wehrlein 1'08.646 0.505
425 Jean-Eric Vergne 1'08.740 0.599
51 Stoffel Vandoorne 1'08.588 0.447
648 Edoardo Mortara 1'08.704 0.563
74 Robin Frijns 1'08.957 0.816
858 René Rast 1'09.205 1.064
951 Nico Müller 1'09.191 1.050
1037 Nick Cassidy 1'09.273 1.132
119 Mitch Evans 1'09.202 1.061
1223 Sacha Fenestraz 1'09.333 1.192
1316 Sébastien Buemi 1'09.216 1.075
1433 Dan Ticktum 1'09.339 1.198
1513 Antonio Felix da Costa 1'09.280 1.139
1610 Sam Bird 1'09.410 1.269
1717 Norman Nato 1'09.405 1.264
183 Sergio Sette Camara 1'09.645 1.504
1936 David Beckmann 1'09.470 1.329
205 Jake Hughes 1'09.933 1.792
2111 Lucas di Grassi 1'09.562 1.421
228 Roberto Merhi 1'10.560 2.419
View full results

2023-06-03T05:19:50Z dg43tfdfdgfd