Porsche/Jaguar Formula E battle on pause, but Wehrlein expects it to resume

The story of the first two seasons of Formula E’s GEN3 has been one of a duel between Porsche and Jaguar, but that form book has been shaken up this year.

Their respective customers, Andretti and Envision Racing, shared the drivers’ and teams’ titles in the first year of the formula, while last season the factory squads came to the fore with TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein beating Jaguar TCS Racing’s Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy to the drivers’ crown while Jaguar claimed the teams’ and first-ever manufacturers’ championships.

Porsche is still a force this season but Jaguar – despite fortuitously winning the season opener in Sao Paulo – has struggled. Nissan, meanwhile, often the best of the rest with Oliver Rowland last season, has stepped up, with Rowland leading the championship standings and in the win column with three from the seven races.

Nissan’s rise hasn’t surprised Wehrlein (pictured above leading Envision's Robin Frijns at Monaco), although he admits Jaguar’s performance has. Even so, he doesn’t believe the British brand has grown weaker this season, despite what the results suggest.

“I would say Jaguar is maybe a bit more of a surprise than Nissan, because we could see already in testing that they are very strong,” Wehrlein said. “And I actually think that Jaguar, they are also strong. I mean, they've won a race this year. The car has been very competitive the last two years, and this car is just an evolution of last year's car.”

This season introduced the GEN3 Evo ruleset. As the name suggests, it’s an incremental adjustment over the cars from the previous two seasons, and with Jaguar having one of the strongest packages of the first two years of GEN3, Wehrlein feels it’s only a matter of time before they’re back fighting with Porsche on a regular basis.

“It's not a revolution, the cars are still pretty similar,” he said. “There are some small changes now this season, like the tires and the four-wheel drive, and I'm very sure that every team is still learning quite a lot on how to maximize this package. So I expect everyone to catch up more during the season and also next year.”

Wehrlein currently sits third in the points, one behind teammate Antonio Felix da Costa, but 49 adrift of leader Rowland. On paper it looks like a dramatic shift from last season – at the same point last season Rowland and Wehrlein's places were reversed from where they are now, but with Rowland only nine back from the leading Wehrlein – but Wehrlein insists that Rowland should have always been deemed a threat, and had he not missed both races in Portland last season through illness, he would’ve been just as much in the championship equation as the Porsche and Jaguar drivers at last season’s London finale.

“They were strong last year,” he said. “Rowland was also in the title fight, if he hadn't missed Portland, and they’ve made another step. So I'm not surprised that they are strong.”