HAMILTON’S TEAM HOLDS ITS NERVE TO INHERIT XE WIN IN CHILE
Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team prevailed amid a dramatic penultimate round of the Extreme E series, held in the Atacama Desert in Chile, as Nico Rosberg’s reigning championship-winning RXR squad was denied a chance of claiming a second straight crown by a technical issue.
With World Rallycross Championship points leader Johan Kristoffersson sitting in the RXR machine and ready to go for the final, the RXR team was forced to withdraw, promoting title rivals Chip Ganassi Racing into the main event.
But, it was X44’s male driver Sebastien Loeb who took an early lead in the five-car final of the Copper X Prix, finding his way through the traffic in a busy first corner of the race.
Having the McLaren entry’s best run of the season so far, American rallycross champion Tanner Foust battled through the pack to run second for the British squad in the opening stages and closed on Loeb through the first two laps of the encounter.
Before the driver-switch zone, Foust making a move for track position sideways through a lefthander near the end of his stint in the car, but Loeb ran the American neck-and-neck in to the switch zone braking line.
Behind, Chip Ganassi Racing driver Kyle LeDuc passed
Carlos Sainz for third, despite then being slowed by a wayward moment. Following the driver changes, X44’s Cristina Gutierrez made good use of her all-electric ODYSSEY 21’s hyperdrive function to pull a margin on McLaren’s Emma Gilmour early in the second phase of the race, while Sara Price ran third and Klara Andersson, making her Extreme E debut just a week after her maiden World RX podium in Portugal, held off Sainz’s team-mate Laia Sanz for fourth. Andersson was making her bow in the series following ABT Cupra driver Jutta Kleinschmidt being sidelined from the Chile event for an injury sustained in free practice on Friday.
Up front, just as Foust had done earlier in the race, Gilmour overtook the X44 machine to cross the finish line first, in what would have been a first win for the team, but time penalties applied for missing way points during the race ultimately dropped the McLaren duo down to fifth and promoted X44 to the win.
Price finished third on track before five-second penalty for a waypoint infringement dropped the Gannasi team down to fourth, meaning the Acciona Sainz squad moved to second with ABT Cupra pair Andersson and Nassar
Al-Attiyah in third. RXR continues to lead the standings with a round to go.
Results
Extreme E Round 4: Copper X
Prix, Antofagasta, Chile. (All ODYSSEY 21) 1 Sebastien Loeb/Cristina Gutierrez (X44) +8m59.728s; 2 2 Laia Sanz/Carlos Sainz (Acciona Sainz) +6.093s; 3 Nassar Al-Attiyah/ Klara Andersson (ABT Cupra) +8.612s; 4 Sara Price/Kyle LeDuc (Chip Ganassi Racing) +10.159s; 5 Emma Gilmour/Tanner Foust (Mclaren) +18.935s.