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WRC Poland and Formula E finale

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First on the road today is Valeriy Gorban's ex-Prodrive Mini. So here's the mandatory pic of it (XPB)

First on the road today is Valeriy Gorban's ex-Prodrive Mini. So here's the mandatory pic of it (XPB)

The penultimate stage of Rally Poland has just begun now, slightly late. As the order for the final day is the reverse of the rally standings, we're kicking off with the midfielders so it'll be a while before we start talking about the points contenders.
Good morning and welcome back to an epic day of action in store. Autosport Live is where you can drink it all in.

The GP2 race is well underway and approaching a conclusion, which you'll be able to read about on our pages shortly.

Coming up is the finale of Rally Poland, where Ott Tanak is set to give DMACK - and himself - a first outright WRC victory. He'll be the second Estonian to win a WRC event after Markko Martin, and it will be the M-Sport Fiesta's first win since Rally GB 2012.

Among that, we'll bring you the latest on the Formula E decider at Battersea Park in London. Just three points separates Lucas di Grassi and Sebastien Buemi.
Nico Prost wins the first London ePrix of the weekend.
Last lap, Prost is leading by 6s. Can Buemi retake sixth from Bird?
This is incredible. Bird has thrown it down the inside of Buemi and taken sixth, but it looks like it came under yellow flags as Turvey hit the wall.

That's taken away Buemi's chance of passing di Grassi and has massive championship implications.
Buemi is being held up by di Grassi massively now, and almost lost his sixth place to Bird. It's very close in the middle of the top 10.
Last year's champion Nelson Piquet announces himself into the race with fastest lap. He's 14th overall.
Looks like Vergne ran into the back of Turvey there, which closes up the gap between the top seven again.
And in turn Stephane Sarrazin, who shunted in qualifying, takes the fastest lap from Prost. Frantic pace and no sign of rain.
Out front, Prost has extended his lead to 3.365s and taken the fastest lap off Senna. Momentarily.

Surprisingly it's di Grassi who takes the fastest lap! Despite losing part of his front wing. That's crucial as it means his title gap will extend to five points IF the order remains.

It almost didn't as Buemi had to abort a move that could have ended his and di Grassi's race.
The wreckage of di Grassi has departed and he could get away with this. But will his car remain competitive with half a front wing?
Unbelievable stuff. Di Grassi has hit Vergne and Buemi almost past him.

Buemi is trying to fight past a stricken di Grassi who has a damaged front wing. But surely the Brazilian will get a black flag if his wing remains lodged under the car.
Vergne attacked Turvey for third there and failed, sending him into the clutches of fifth place di Grassi. There's little to separate, well, anyone really.
As we are, Prost leads Senna, Turvey, Vergne, di Grassi, Buemi, da Costa, Bird, Heidfeld, d'Ambrosio.
Di Grassi has a look at Vergne, Buemi has a look at di Grassi and it's mayhem on the restart. Close racing throughout the field so far today.
Thanks to the quality of British summer, the rain-hit qualifying session has left us with a very interesting grid for the penultimate race of the FE season.

Here's a reminder of the top 10: Prost; Senna; Turvey; Frijns; Vergne; Abt; Bird; Duval; di Grassi.

That's the championship leader in 10th. What about the man chasing him for the title, a point in arrears? Buemi is 12th. Game on.
OK... Kirchhofer spun and stalled at Turn 2, causing a safety car. The leaders who hadn't yet pitted came in, but Markelov dropped it and crashed into the barriers at pit exit. Now it's a red flag. Armand, yet to make a tyre change, leads, from Evans, Gelael, Eriksson and Binder, all of whom made early stops having started on super-softs. Meanwhile, Marciello leapfrogged Giovinazzi at the stops and runs 6th.
Giovinazzi lost the lead to Marciello after the restart, now has regained it, with Ghiotto up to 3rd. But Gelael and Evans are storming up, on harder slicks, having stopped early!
Mikkelsen was happier with his set-up this morning after making changes overnight to cure the understeer that hit him yesterday.

But the important test is this afternoon, as he's been finding the handling worse on repeat runs of stages when there's more grip as the surface is cleaner.
We're running the same three stages as this morning, but in a different order. This is DMACK Trophy frontrunner Osian Pryce's view of what we're kicking off with:

SS14 Stanczyki (15.70 miles)

The longest stage of the rally uses some parts of last year’s route in reverse. The start is pretty high-speed, with some long straights where it’s vital to carry speed onto them. The mid-section of the stage gets really technical, narrow and twisty in places – there’s absolutely no room for error in here.

The section towards the finish is mostly high-speed and back on the wide road again, but there are quite a few deceptive corners in there.
Doesn't look too promising for Ogier at split one though, where Mikkelsen is 2.5s quicker.
Ogier was unsurprisingly unhappy at lunchtime, having lost 43s in three stages when running first on the road this morning.

"You're driving on a knife edge but losing all the time, it's impossible," he told Autosport.

This afternoon could be better with the stages having been run once already this morning.
Slight delay to the stage start, but Ogier is up and running now.
And over at Holjes, an old friend of the WRC just started the World Rallycross weekend with a heat win. Nice one, Sebastien Loeb.
Here's the tyre plan for the afternoon:

Ogier, Latvala, Ostberg: three soft, two hard
Mikkelsen, Neuville: three hard, two soft
Tanak: five hards
Back in business for the afternoon loop of Rally Poland stages.
Senna is 0.7s up in the first sector alone in the Mahindra, an impressive and tidy lap so far.
Senna is up next and with a drying circuit he should be able to attack Frijns' time.
Frijns pumps in a benchmark of 1m29.500s. Will that be enough to hold off his challengers as the track dries?
Super pole is underway and Frijns celebrates by getting his Amlin Andretti a bit shapey.
This should be Prost's pole – the track is drying so quickly, and by the time he's on track he'll have comfortably the best conditions. Unless it rains suddenly. We wouldn't rule it out.
Heidfeld goes eighth fastest and that's all our runners done and dusted for the four qualifying groups.

Super pole usually contains the five fastest drivers, but Vergne's shunt means it will be a top four. Here are your super pole drivers and their times:

1 Prost 1m23.247s
2 Turvey +0.722s
3 Senna +1.032s
4 Frijns +1.116s
Bird goes sixth and Abt seventh, while a furious Piquet missed the final run and has to settle for 16th.
With the red out for Vergne's shunt, there's some interesting rules in play now.

The precedent set in the Paris ePrix means Robin Frijns will be allowed to go out and set another lap at 200kws. The session has been extended by four minutes so he can do just that.

Prost crossed the line at full speed before the red flag, so his time will stand.
Jean-Eric Vergne is into the wall! He had the fastest banker but he's in trouble now.
Vergne has the best 'banker' lap ran at 170kws, but the cars are all onto their full-power lap now.

Ma Qing Hua is likely out of the running as he's had an off somewhere on track.

By: Matt Beer

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