Pascal Wehrlein’s Shanghai E-Prix came to an unfortunate end a few laps before the mid-point of the second race of the weekend when he picked up a puncture and had to enter the pits for a tyre change.

The Porsche powertrain unit performed well today however as a dominant race win went to his Portuguese factory team-mate Antonio Felix da Costa, while championship leader Nick Cassidy (Jaguar), ahead of Pascal in the points table, finished fourth.

The MIM-contracted driver, who had started from P13 on the grid, was battling for position in eleventh place on lap 11 of 28 when the front wing of Sam Bird’s NEOM McLaren clipped the left rear tyre of his TAG-Heuer Porsche, thus forcing the German driver into the pits and bringing an end to any hopes of a decent points-scoring finish.

Unlike Saturday, when he was able to qualify well and do a great race to hold on to second place, today’s second encounter first saw Pascal uncharacteristically fail to qualify for the quarter-final Duels, meaning that he had to start from row 7, and he was then unable to make much of an impression in the early stages before the puncture, eventually finishing in twentieth position.

“The car’s balance wasn’t great in practice and qualifying. The grip wasn’t right either. After qualifying we found the problem and fixed it in time for the race – it was caused by the incident yesterday,” declared Pascal. “I then succeeded in making up a few positions in the race before someone hit the rear of my car and caused a puncture. I had to call it quits after that.”

Pascal still lies second in the table, but is now 25 points behind Cassidy with two rounds and four races remaining.