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Formula E title 'very unrealistic' despite Berlin P2 - Wehrlein
Pascal Wehrlein’s second place, and Oliver Rowland’s retirement from the first race of the Berlin E-Prix may be keeping the title fight alive, but the reigning champion is downplaying his hopes.
Rowland needed a second place with Wehrlein failing to score to wrap up the championship, but the reverse ended up happening. The gap is now 50 points, with 87 still on offer – although Rowland’s unpassable wins record means that should it come down to a tiebreaker, he’ll take it.
“I think the drivers championship for us is very unrealistic,” Wehrlein conceded after the first race of the Berlin E-Prix, despite his strong day. “Everything we can do is to go on in every race [and] collect the points."
Saturday’s result moves Porsche ahead of Nissan in the manufacturers’ standings, while the TAG Heuer Porsche factory outfit leads the teams’ standings, and while Wehrlein remains in an unfavorable drivers’ position, he says the teams’ and manufacturers’ crowns are the main focus.
“It's clear that our team targets are the teams’ and the manufacturers’ championships and that's [what] we focus on,” he said. “Today I did my part of collecting a lot of points for the team to bring us up there. [There's] three more races to go, so we’ll try to maximize those.”
Wehrlein’s second place – which was coupled with the fastest lap – came in spite of a three-place grid penalty for colliding with teammate Antonio Felix da Costa in Friday’s opening practice session. The result, while a good one, still left the German ruing what might have been.
“For sure, the penalty didn't help, and I pushed really hard in the last couple of laps,” he said. “I went a bit wide at Turns 9-10 on my second-to-last lap, but I think it was clear that we were super quick today, the quickest out there.
“[It was a] great day for us – an important weekend, home race for the team, for me, a lot of partners and sponsors here, our board members, my family, a lot of friends, so it was great to put on a good show, a good race.”
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?
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