Pascal Wehrlein’s insipid end to the Formula E season has been entirely in keeping with a theme that began much earlier in a title campaign that rarely felt like it could ever be sustained.
Yet again, Porsche’s and Wehrlein’s qualifying was not up to scratch in Rome. And again, it cost them. Wehrlein, once the 2023 points leader, is now 49 points in arrears to Jake Dennis. With just 58 to play for, any notions of the drivers’ title is firmly in the fantasy bracket.
The teams’ crown is more realistic, as Porsche is 14 points behind Envision. These are facts that dawned on Porsche quickly after the action in Rome, and Wehrlein was blunt in the assessment of what the results from that double-header meant.
“I think [the focus] is more on the team championship now,” he told The Race.
“Qualifying was not good enough to fight for the podium, for the race win. Especially today [Sunday], it was a lot more difficult to overtake.”
Quite why Wehrlein has been lacklustre in several qualifying sessions this season is not entirely clear. Treating the tyres correctly is crucial in finding the hundredths and thousandths of a second needed to break into the qualifying top four.
What does seem clear is that the one-lap pace of the Porsche 99X Electric is slightly lacking, meaning that in races where the running is essentially flat-out, as was the case in Rome, the die is cast for nothing more than crumbs from the points table.
On Sunday, those crumbs amounted to six points for seventh place – up eight places from his starting spot – a day after Wehrlein had finished ninth (from 10th on the grid).
“Starting from 15th is obviously not good enough to fight for the top positions and that’s our weak area since a couple of races [ago],” continued Wherlein.
“It is not something we are super strong on the whole season I would say, sometimes just making it into the duels but today and yesterday we were a bit far from that.
“Obviously that makes our life difficult for the race. We need to work on qualifying because we know that our race pace, once we start at the front, is very good.”
In the minefield of a bellicose midfield where wings and carbon shreds rain down, Wehrlein tweaked his car and his wrist. It was nothing more than a bruise but it is a mark that will stay on him for a few days just as fog of his wayward title plans thicken too.
It is part of Porsche Formula E boss Florian Modlinger’s remit to dissipate that fog and try to rally his troops into regrouping and taking the fight to Envision in London now that, in his own words, Wehrelin’s title push needs a “miracle” and is effectively “done”.
“We have to be realistic with the setback, especially the qualifying performance,” Modlinger told The Race.
“The championship fight between the teams is wide open, we have three teams I think within 25 points. Realistically the driver’s championship is done, theoretically possible but realistically we need a miracle.”
Looking at Wehrlein’s Rome weekend, it was clear he was missing in the final sector, where he was a catastrophic 0.4 seconds off in qualifying on Sunday. Prior to that he was on for second place in his group, before the grip fell away. That could have been the boost he needed to fan the dying flames of his title hopes.
It wasn’t to be and, with Dennis rattling through title-hopes-boosting milestones one after the other, Wehrlein was essentially a spectator as Dennis won in the same car and Mitch Evans misjudged and harpoon-vaulted fellow title hopeful Nick Cassidy.
“If you see the whole season, all the 14 qualifying sessions, there’s a typical pattern where we struggle with Pascal on ambient [temperature] and track characteristics, and there we need to work hard on to improve for season 10 [2024],” added Modlinger.
The rationale for how Porsche’s season has slipped from strong favourite to also-ran has been that Jaguar always had a competitive car but couldn’t harness its best attributes initially in Mexico City and Diriyah.
There is little doubt that Jaguar and Porsche have the best technical packages on the grid. What has made the differences is the paucity of errors and wrong calls for Dennis and Cassidy and their respective teams.
The irony of course is that Andretti and Envision are the customer teams and resource-wise they are the poorer. However, that is the beauty of Formula E – whereby complete parity and equal opportunity is given to those doing deals for manufacturers’ powertrains.
Although not defensive on this topic, Modlinger was keen to stress that Porsche has completed “a big step forward from the whole team structure, team operations, with the package that showed how often we can win here with six race wins [three for Wehrlein, two for Dennis and one for Antonio Felix da Costa] in 14 races”.
“Therefore, we need to see this and we can be really happy and satisfied because that’s a big step forward,” he added.
“We are now operating with the top teams and fighting with the top teams.
“We are a top team now, and clearly you want more but our clear target was to be able to fight for the championships until the last race.”
These are factually accurate but while they might be sound with contextualisation of Porsche clearly underperforming in the Gen2 era, many will point to the fact that the early-season performance has plateaued, at best.
Yet the days of Porsche turning up and dominating any racing category are no more. It is seen in the recent Porsche 963 Hypercar project too. So perhaps the more pertinent question is what has changed at Porsche from a cultural point of view in recent years?
That is a deep-rooted question that can only be sufficiently answered by the top brass at Porsche.
For now, Porsche will be hard at work planning its manufacturer testing plans for September and October with a clear view to properly harnessing a competitive package that can consistently provide Wehrlein and da Costa with the staying power to bring a driver’s title to Weissach at what will be the fifth time of trying.
Keyword: Rome underlined Wehrlein’s insipid Formula E title capitulation