Alastair Staley/Getty Images
Wehrlein, da Costa admit Formula E title hopes over
TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein and Antonio Felix da Costa admitted their hopes of claiming the Formula E drivers' championship are all but over, with their attention now turning to claiming team and manufacturer honors.
Both sit 68 and 83 points adrift of runaway championship leader Oliver Rowland with Wehrlein's victory in the Miami E-Prix being the team's only win so far this season. The pair's double podium in the second Shanghai race allowed the factory Porsche team to move ahead of Rowland's Nissan team in the standings – although Porsche, with Andretti and Cupra Kiro also contributing, remains 16 points behind Nissan (and NEOM McLaren) in the Manufacturers' standings.
“To be honest, our focus has switched to the teams' and constructors' championship,” Wehrlein conceded. “I think already before Shanghai, we had to accept that the gap was too big, only with big miracles. We might have had another chance, but looking at yesterday, and not scoring any points there, it just gets more and more unrealistic.
“I think our main target is to fight for the constructors' and teams’ championship, [and] try and bring that home, which will be a very hard fight until the end.”
Like Wehrlein, da Costa has four podiums this season, the third-highest total behind Rowland (seven) and McLaren's Taylor Barnard (five), who briefly moved past both Porsche drivers on Saturday before the two recovered on Sunday.
Da Costa ended last season with four wins in seven races and led the standings after round two in Mexico City this time around, having started the season with back-to-back second places, but has been the only one of the lead trio to not win a race so far. He, too, said that titles for Porsche rather than individual honors must now be the focus.
“That's where we're putting all our chips now, and try and find motivation to keep digging and keep pushing,” he said. “It's always [in] my heart a difficult thing to accept when the Drivers’ Championship is gone, especially when in Miami we should have almost gotten back into the lead.
“So things turn around very quickly in this championship; it's just the way it is. Sometimes in life we have to accept that things don't turn out the way we want.
“We're going to try and keep them under pressure, on the teams’ and constructors’ [championships], and try and win one of those.”
Last season, while Porsche won the drivers’ championship with Wehrlein, it fell short in both the teams’ and manufacturers’ championships which both went to Jaguar.
Dominik Wilde
Dominik often jokes that he was born in the wrong country – a lover of NASCAR and IndyCar, he covered both in a past life as a junior at Autosport in the UK, but he’s spent most of his career to date covering the sliding and flying antics of the U.S.’ interpretation of rallycross. Rather fitting for a man that says he likes “seeing cars do what they’re not supposed to do”, previously worked for a car stunt show, and once even rolled a rally car with Travis Pastrana. He was also comprehensively beaten in a kart race by Sebastien Loeb once, but who hasn’t been?
Read Dominik Wilde's articles
Latest News
Comments
Comments are disabled until you accept Social Networking Cookies. Update cookie preferences
If the dialog doesn't appear, ad-blockers are often the cause; try disabling yours or see our Social Features Support.