Jakarta E-Prix: Maserati's Gunther beats Dennis to maiden pole

Having been quickest in the two practice sessions across Friday evening 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 second sector of the track.

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, the German driver 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 countryman and guarantee himself a spot on the front row.

Meanwhile, Dennis had eased through quarter finals with a half-a-second advantage over Abt’s Robin Frijns, before defeating Vergne 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 DS Penske duo Vergne and Vandoorne due to line up fourth and fifth respectively.

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.

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 - 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 countryman 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.

Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Driver	Time	Gap
1	7	Maximilian Gunther	1'08.141
2	27	Jake Dennis	1'08.482	0.341
3	94	Pascal Wehrlein	1'08.646	0.505
4	25	Jean-Eric Vergne	1'08.740	0.599
5	1	Stoffel Vandoorne	1'08.588	0.447
6	48	Edoardo Mortara	1'08.704	0.563
7	4	Robin Frijns	1'08.957	0.816
8	58	René Rast	1'09.205	1.064
9	51	Nico Müller	1'09.191	1.050
10	37	Nick Cassidy	1'09.273	1.132
11	9	Mitch Evans	1'09.202	1.061
12	23	Sacha Fenestraz	1'09.333	1.192
13	16	Sébastien Buemi	1'09.216	1.075
14	33	Dan Ticktum	1'09.339	1.198
15	13	Antonio Felix da Costa	1'09.280	1.139
16	10	Sam Bird	1'09.410	1.269
17	17	Norman Nato	1'09.405	1.264
18	3	Sergio Sette Camara	1'09.645	1.504
19	36	David Beckmann	1'09.470	1.329
20	5	Jake Hughes	1'09.933	1.792
21	11	Lucas di Grassi	1'09.562	1.421
22	8	Roberto Merhi	1'10.560	2.419
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