Porsche had marked itself out as a clear favourite for the title at the beginning of Formula E's Gen3 era, when factory driver Pascal Wehrlein and Porsche-powered Andretti ace Jake Dennis locked out the top two spots in Mexico City and Diriyah, with Wehrlein even taking a rare double win in Saudi Arabia.
A podium and a victory followed for Wehrlein's team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa in Hyderabad and Cape Town respectively, cementing the belief that the Porsche powertrain was the benchmark in FE. After just five races of the season, Porsche was already 40 points clear of its nearest rival in the teams' championship.
But then the factory team's run of results slowed. Wehrlein had already not been able to finish on the podium again since his victories in Saudi Arabia in January and, in the following three races across Sao Paulo and Berlin, he would finish no higher than sixth. Da Costa's results in the other works car also left much to be desired. The following race in Monaco turned out to be Porsche's nadir, with both Wehrlein and da Costa failing to break inside the top 10.
It left Porsche with a lot of head-scratching to do, especially with Jaguar-powered cars winning four races on the trot and Nick Cassidy and Envision Racing taking the lead in both championships. Even its motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach wasn't shy to admit that the German manufacturer had hit a "bit of a slump" after starting the season in the best way possible.
Porsche needed to turn things around for the second half of the season, which features seven rapid-fire races in a span of just two months, if it was to remain in the title hunt. And it managed exactly that in Indonesia, with a visibly-improved 99X package allowing Wehrlein to take victory in Jakarta and reinstate Porsche to the top of the drivers' and teams' table.
One of the biggest improvements came in one-lap pace, with Wehrlein qualifying a strong third behind pole-sitter Maximilian Guenther and Jake Dennis. This was Wehrlein's best qualifying result of the season, having not started a race higher than fifth prior to Jakarta - not even when he took the double win in Diriyah.
Source: Autosport