Sunday though was an entirely different story. We had to be out of the shitty hostel by 11 am, but we left for the second day of Formula E way earlier than that. We had a great last day ahead of us.
We arrived at the Tempelhof Airport during second free training, but that didn’t bother us much, as we tried to qualify for the e-race. We didn’t suffice. Still had a great deal of fun. The e-race is a simulator race against some of the real life Formula E champions.
We watched the second qualifying. I got a free fidget spinner.
Formula E qualifyings are quite different though. It’s not a standard race like in other Formula championships, but rather a set of five different qualifyings in groups of five, with the last one being called the Superpole.
In every round five randomly selected drivers race for the best lap time. The five best of those drivers then proceed to the Superpole for places one to five. It’s quite an interesting system.
The second major difference to other Formula style races is fan boost. The three drivers who achieve this status get a bit of extra power in their second race car. Formula E changes cars after the first half of a race, because the battery packs don’t last long enough under race conditions.
After that, we went to get ourselves some food and drink. We only had general tickets, without grandstand access, for that day. We were lucky though. Apparently, they hadn’t sold enough tickets, so they were giving plenty away for free, and so we got on the grandstand. Again.
It wasn’t the best decision for my sunburn.
In between, we left the venue to have some fun with a friends Mini Cooper S Roadster. It has so much power. We had so much fun with it.
At 4 pm, the final race started. It was a much harder one than on the Saturday event. There were many crashes. Three of them in my corner. Two of them so close, that it looked like the race would be over for the drivers involved. No one got a DNF though.
Felix Rosenqvist was the umber one driver yet again. Until the time came to change the cars. That was when the pit lane mishap occurred. Felix was just leaving his box when his team member Nick Heidfeld, the second Mahindra driver, hit his racer. That got him a 10-second penalty for unsafe release.
That didn’t change all too much in the final standings though. Felix Rosenqvist lost his first place to Sebastien Buemi but was able to defend the second place from Lucas DiGrassi, who was 10.8 seconds behind.
We then left Berlin to drive home.
Robin Ho Fotos 