Wehrlein got away with Cape Town blunder but it may hurt later

Pascal Wehrlein rued losing a golden opportunity to extend his Formula E championship lead in Cape Town after the unfathomable error that led to him hitting the back of Sebastien Buemi’s Envision Jaguar on lap one.

But in reality this was more of a let-off than an opportunity lost, as Wehrlein leaves South Africa with an unchanged 18-point lead.

That’s because the factory Porsche driver’s nearest rival – Andretti’s Jake Dennis – had almost as much of a disastrous race on a day where he had a good shot at reaching the podium.

Wehrlein had enjoyed one of his best qualifying runs of the season as he started in sixth position on the grid after making it through to the duel format stage for only the third time in 2023.

He lost out to Buemi off the start line but sat side-by-side with him for the first few corners before the 2015/16 champion claimed a decisive line.

The drama came entering the Turn 10 Mouille Point corner as Buemi initially outbraked himself and just managed to avoid hitting Jean-Eric Vergne’s DS ahead.

But Wehrlein, who was checking his speed as a reference to the Envision Jaguar, found himself unable to do likewise and made heavy contact with Buemi, spinning him into the barrier and breaking his own front suspension.

“It was my mistake, quite clearly,” Wehrlein, who will carry a three-place grid penalty into Sao Paulo, told The Race.

“I took Seb as a reference for the braking point there and he went wide and basically I was braking even later than him.

“Once I realised I hit the brake pedal harder to make the car stop but locked up and at this point of time I completely missed the corner and then unfortunately hit Seb.

“It’s completely on my side, the fault. It is my mistake and I apologised to him already and obviously also to the team.”

Dennis was starting only 14th after a penalty for impeding Stoffel Vandoorne in qualifying.

But his race pace was such that another charge though the field to the podium looked likely given how the race unfolded.

That never happened because Dennis got a drivethrough penalty for a tyre pressure infringement when his Porsche 99X Electric fell below Hankook’s minimum pressure of 1.20 bar.

According to the FIA the tyre pressure measurement is done in ‘real time’ when the car is running using the Tyre Pressure Management System supplied by Hankook.

This provides ‘an absolute pressure measurement’ and ‘to calculate the relative pressure, and check the pressure is above the minimum threshold, the competitor needs to subtract the current atmospheric pressure provided by the official timekeeper’.

Dennis had been running in ninth position when his race was compromised by the penalty and he finished 13th and last.

“We started off on the back foot with a few issues and then we made life difficult for ourselves,” said Dennis.

“It was looking quite good for me, maybe a top six.”

Team principal Roger Griffiths admitted Andretti had been on the “back foot” in practice and qualifying, but felt it had made constant progress and found further gains ahead of the race that would’ve helped Dennis come through the field as he has repeatedly this season so far.

“It didn’t really reflect in our grid position but it felt like we had a really strong race car,” said Griffiths.

He admitted the penalty, which he put down to a technical problem affecting the tyre pressure, effectively “put an end” to Dennis’s weekend.

“Any time you have to enter the pitlane in Formula E [in the race] that really is the end of your weekend,” Griffiths added.

Though Dennis couldn’t close on Wehrlein, the championship leader might face longer-term problems as a consequence of his Cape Town non-score as Antonio Felix da Costa, Jean-Eric Vergne and Nick Cassidy closed in further by repeating their Hyderabad podiums, albeit in a different order this weekend.

Vergne is now 30 points behind Buemi, with South Africa winner da Costa a further four away and Cassidy three points behind him.

Driver Standings

“Looking at the championship it was not a bad day for us today because our main competitors didn’t really catch up a lot,” said Wehrlein.

“Nevertheless, I’m just looking at the single race and that’s obviously disappointing me.

“On one hand it’s maybe a bit of damage limitation, it didn’t hurt us too much in the championship.”

Though Porsche has – between its works team and customer Andretti – won four of the Gen3 era’s first five races, it has generally had to come through the field to do so.

Wehrlein’s two Diriyah wins were achieved from ninth and fifth on the grid and da Costa had to charge from 11th in Cape Town.

Formula E now has a month-long break until the next race in Sao Paulo, and Wehrlein said Porsche would use it to tackle its single-lap pace.

“One focus is on qualifying,” he said. “In qualifying we just managed to put ourselves into the duels but we never managed so far to start from the first row for example.

“So, the focus is definitely there because we know in the race we have a strong package.

“Now is a bit of a longer break, there is time to analyse the first couple of races, what can we do better, what can we do differently.

“But looking at the global picture there was already, obviously, a lot more positives than negatives.”

The Race understands that Porsche has cancelled a planned post Cape Town test due to insufficient parts being available.

The team instead hopes to track test in early April prior to the Berlin E-Prix double-header.