Pascal Wehrlein may sleep tonight comfortably in the knowledge he goes into Sunday’s Formula E season finale with the championship lead, but he’s not calling it job done just yet.
In fact, with only a slender three point advantage after his victory on Saturday, the TAG Heuer Porsche driver says the job is “only 50 percent done.”
“I think the Jaguars were a bit quicker in qualifying than us, so a bit of work for us there,” he conceded. “But our race pace looked very strong, and I think tomorrow we’ll be super tight again.”
Wehrlein won a race that was action-packed from start to finish, but despite a tense duel with Jaguar TCS Racing’s Mitch Evans – his closest championship rival – he managed to avoid most of the carnage that saw the safety car deployed twice and a late race neutralization from a full course yellow.
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“I saw all the chaos behind and obviously the cars when they crashed are quite loud,” he said. “So many times I just heard cars colliding, and also in turn 16, so I guess it was a chaotic race, but I think in the front it was not that chaotic.”
It’s that sort of drama that leaves Wehrlein wary going into the season finale, despite his enviable position.
“A race can change very quickly. Ideally I would have had a great start, and maybe you went into the lead earlier than when I did,” he said alluding to being passed by Andretti’s Norman Nato early on, before the drawn out fight with Evans and fellow podium finisher Sebastien Buemi. “But you can never plan races [beforehand]. You’re trying to make a strategy, but also the team needs to be very quick reacting to the current situation.
“I think what we did today was perfect.”