The Kiwi, who moved from Jaguar customer team Envision to the full factory outfit in the off-season, jumped to the top of the timesheets with a 1m24.617s inside the final 20 minutes at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo on Friday.
His best effort left him less than half a tenth clear of Maximilian Guenther, who had hovered towards the top of the times for the majority of the afternoon aboard his Maserati MSG machine.
Guenther too improved late in the day, whittling his 1m24.706s down to a 1m24.658s to usurp the second Jaguar of Mitch Evans.
The second Kiwi in the Jaguar fold had been in strong form across pre-season testing, having topped the only other two sessions to have been held this week.
His 1m24.703s left him third on Friday, but his session-topping time of 1m24.474s from Tuesday morning still proved to be the fastest of the event, although aided by drivers being restricted to only 300kW of power following the battery fire earlier in the week.
Robin Frijns made it three Jaguar-powered cars inside the top four, the Dutchman having finished at the head of the pack in the morning’s race simulation with a late overtake on Antonio Felix da Costa.
But the Envision driver lost track time due to a battery change, which left him on 60 laps and the fewest tours completed of any driver across the nearly nine-hour session.
In comparison, his team-mate Sebastien Buemi completed the most with 127 laps although was classified down in 11th.
Da Costa finished Friday’s timed running 16th, less than half a second back as the 21-car field was covered by just over seven tenths, while his Porsche team-mate Pascal Wehrlein claimed fifth.
Norman Nato finished sixth, while his Andretti Global team-mate and reigning Formula E champion Jake Dennis was ninth on a 1m24.848s.
Oliver Rowland was eighth having lost some time to a power issue after coming to a stop on track during the simulation race, while McLaren’s Jake Hughes was ninth.
Team-mate Sam Bird was 12th, just ahead of Maserati MSG’s Jehan Daruvala, the Formula E rookie the first driver to hit the 100-lap mark during the day.
Nyck de Vries in the sole Mahindra finished 17th with a 1m25.118s after completing 100 laps, as team-mate Edoardo Mortara was unable to take to the track following the battery fire which impacted the team.
ERT’s Sergio Sette Camara and Dan Ticktum finished bottom of the order having occupied the lower reaches for most of the day having experienced problems during the simulation race.
