Wehrlein takes Porsche from ‘zero to hero’ with surprise Misano win

Misano E-Prix winner Pascal Wehrlein admitted he was surprised that Oliver Rowland was able to pull away from him in the latter stages of Sunday’s Formula E race, considering his reported energy usage.

In a race where being out in front for an extended period was seen to be something of a disadvantage, Wehrlein moved to the fore in the closing stages and intended to stay there, but let Rowland by when he could sense he was over-consuming power.

“We had a good start and the beginning was a bit chaotic, but once the race settled down a bit I think it was a fight of four or five cars, probably, and at a certain moment I think Oliver and myself progressed a little bit more,” Wehrlein said. “I took over the lead and initially it was to keep the lead but he was putting a lot of pressure (on) and I was sure if I was trying to defend him, I would just struggle.”

Rowland looked like he might take a comfortable win over Wehrlein after gapping the Porsche driver, but he ran out of usable energy on the final lap. While the Nissan team were puzzled by Rowland’s shortage, Wehrlein said that his team had told him of the energy disparity between both.

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“In the end I didn’t defend -- I let him through and my team kept telling me I was two, three percent up on energy, so I was very surprised about that and actually until the last or second-to-last lap I was not even sure if that was correct or not,” said Wehrlein “Then his energy was dying in the last lap and that’s when we took over. It was the right call to trust the information that we had.”

Victory made Wehrlein the first repeat winner of the season, and came after his teammate Antonio Felix da Costa was stripped of the win in Saturday’s race for a technical breach, while Wehrlein also failed to finish in the points.

“Very happy about today,” he said. “Obviously there’s still a crying eye about yesterday in general. We didn’t score any points yesterday but the season is still long and it goes quickly from ‘zero to hero’ or the other way around, so we just need to keep working hard, do our thing, not getting any penalties or disqualifications, and I’m sure we will do well.”