Formula E pre-season testing: Venturi's Mortara tops damp opening session

Heavy Friday night thunderstorms were followed by intermittent showers during the three-hour Saturday morning session at a damp Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia.

That meant Mortara's late benchmark of 1m18.148s was over three seconds slower than the fastest time of last year, then set by BMW Andretti driver Maximilian Guenther.

This is despite the absence of the artificial chicane on the main straight for 2020, which has been removed to lower the number of expensive crashes at the site in recent campaigns.

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Despite continuing with the DS Techeetah car from last season, with the team's new machine set for an April debut, defending champion Antonio Felix da Costa set the initial pace on a 1m20.417s ahead of team-mate Jean-Eric Vergne.

A red flag was called just 20 minutes into the session as Sergio Sette Camara, driving for the rebranded Dragon / Penske Autosport squad, ran into the gravel at Turn 6.

A second pause was then required with 50 minutes to go after Nissan e.dams racer Sebastien Buemi dropped his car off the track at Turn 3 and needed recovering.

Jaguar driver Mitch Evans suffered the most noticeable incident, crashing at Turn 6 after the throttle stuck open right at the end of the morning running.

There was a late flurry of session-best times before Mortara topped the running order ahead of da Costa, who improved to end up just 0.031s shy.

The all-new powertrain of the NIO 333 car allowed Oliver Turvey to run third quickest ahead of new Mahindra Racing signing Alexander Sims and then Sette Camara.

Envision Virgin Racing's Nick Cassidy - who comfortably topped the Marrakech rookie test for the team in March - was sixth ahead of Audi factory driver Rene Rast and Robin Frijns.

Briton Jake Dennis had led the way for BMW Andretti in the final hour only to be shuffled back to ninth ahead of Jaguar's Sam Bird.

Oliver Rowland in 11th, along with Vergne and Alex Lynn, were the first drivers to have lap times scrapped because of new track limits introduced for 2020 at Turns 1 and 10.

Lucas di Grassi ran to 12th for Audi, edging out Porsche recruit Pascal Wehrlein and Mortara's team-mate Norman Nato.

Test times

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Gap	Laps
1	Edoardo Mortara	Venturi	Mercedes	1m18.148s	43
2	Antonio Felix da Costa	DS Techeetah	DS	0.031s	40
3	Oliver Turvey	NIO	NIO	0.177s	39
4	Alexander Sims	Mahindra	Mahindra	0.207s	47
5	Sergio Sette Camara	Dragon	Penske	0.244s	26
6	Nick Cassidy	Virgin	Audi	0.245s	40
7	Rene Rast	Audi	Audi	0.246s	42
8	Robin Frijns	Virgin	Audi	0.276s	38
9	Jake Dennis	BMW	BMW	0.309s	45
10	Sam Bird	Jaguar	Jaguar	0.314s	31
11	Oliver Rowland	Nissan e.Dams	Nissan	0.395s	31
12	Lucas di Grassi	Audi	Audi	0.432s	40
13	Pascal Wehrlein	Porsche	Porsche	0.563s	41
14	Norman Nato	Venturi	Mercedes	0.627s	44
15	Alex Lynn	Mahindra	Mahindra	0.638s	35
16	Stoffel Vandoorne	Mercedes	Mercedes	0.639s	44
17	Sebastien Buemi	Nissan e.Dams	Nissan	0.689s	27
18	Jean-Eric Vergne	DS Techeetah	DS	0.723s	37
19	Nyck de Vries	Mercedes	Mercedes	0.757s	42
20	Maximilian Guenther	BMW	BMW	1.033s	42
21	Tom Blomqvist	NIO	NIO	1.582s	26
22	Nico Muller	Dragon	Penske	1.621s	39
23	Andre Lotterer	Porsche	Porsche	1.983s	41
24	Mitch Evans	Jaguar	Jaguar	2.170s	20