The Porsche Formula E team has more reasons than most to be satisfied with its current performance this season as it prepares for its home race at the Berlin E-Prix this weekend. The German manufacturer has been the class of the field so far in 2023 as it leads the Teams’ championship by 41 points, and its driver Pascal Wehrlein holds a 24-point buffer over Jake Dennis – another Porsche powertrain user with Andretti Autosport.
It’s fair to say the marque hit the ground running with the new-for-2023 Gen3 regulations but, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your last race – and that arguably should have Porsche worried.
The pecking order was turned on its head somewhat at the previous round in the inaugural Sao Paulo E-Prix, as not only did Porsche not win for just the second time this year – following Jean-Eric Vergne’s success for DS Penske in Hyderabad – but no Porsche-powered car even occupied a step of the podium for the first time all season.
Instead, it was Jaguar that took a clean sweep with Mitch Evans leading home Envision Racing’s Nick Cassidy and team-mate Sam Bird. For Evans it was a much-needed result, his first win and podium of the year after enduring a difficult start to the campaign.
“It’s come at a really good time, we couldn’t leave it much later in the season because we’ve lost a lot of ground [in the championship],” says the Kiwi, who already sits 47 points adrift of Wehrlein in the standings after six races. “The qualifying has been good, the pace has been good, the race pace has been solid but for different reasons we’ve not been able to convert into a good result.”
A quick scan of those results from the previous rounds might suggest to some that the success in Brazil was just a flash in the pan but delve deeper and it’s clear that the Big Cats have had a roar for some time.
Both Evans and Bird had been on for a strong result in Hyderabad before the latter collected his team-mate and was handed a five-place grid drop that, somewhat ironically, was applied in Brazil. This was because a qualifying crash prevented the Brit from starting in Cape Town, while Evans finished outside the points in South Africa.
There had been other signs, though, that Jaguar had the capabilities to mount a challenge against Porsche, not least a pole for Evans in Hyderabad and Bird having taken third and fourth from the two races in Diriyah.
Source: Autosport