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After the elation of the Round 8 victory in Tokyo, Maserati MSG Racing wasn’t able to repeat their race-winning performance, with Jake Hughes finishing in P18 and yesterday’s winner, Stoffel Vandoorne unable to complete Round 9 following late-race contact.

With no qualifying yesterday and no threat of rain for today’s race day, Stoffel and Jake knew how important today’s session would be.

Stoffel was out first in Group A and felt comfortable with the car having made adjustments following FP3. He was ready to put in a strong push lap when Jaguar’s Mitch Evans had a heavy crash into the barriers, bringing a delay to the group stage. Stoffel did all he could, but traffic made the perfect lap impossible to achieve. He missed out on progressing to the duels by half a second.

Jake was in Group B, but it quickly became apparent that tyre temperatures were once again causing him issues. He too missed out on progressing to the duels by a narrow margin, the whole group covered by eight tenths of a second.

Trying to get the most out of the race, the team split strategies. Jake had the bolder early Attack Mode where Stoffel’s race was more measured and following the expected strategy. Jake’s strategy, however, was scuppered by a very late safety car for McLaren’s Taylor Barnard.

Being so late to be deployed, the window to add laps to the race had expired, giving Jake one lap to activate and complete his remaining two minutes of Attack Mode.  He had to slow significantly in the final lap to comply to the Attack Mode regulations before taking the chequered flag, dropping him to the bottom of the classified order.

It was insult added to injury, as Stoffel had come into the pits as the safety car was deployed with heavy damage on his car. Nissan’s Norman Nato had a torque cut as Stoffel had been moving to overtake him, causing the two to have contact. Stoffel was briefly lifted into the air causing a broken front wing and a puncture which forced him to retire from the race.

It was not the sign off to the weekend Maserati MSG Racing were hoping for after the highs of yesterday. The team’s focus now turns to optimising qualifying performance, aiming to return stronger for the next rounds in Shanghai.