Pascal Wehrlein leapfrogged over his TAG Heuer Porsche teammate Antonio Felix da Costa to move into second place overall in the championship after finishing sixth in the first Monaco E-Prix of the weekend.
Starting P5 on the grid after being eliminated by Oliver Rowland (Nissan) in their Quarter-Final Duel, the MIM-contracted driver ran a steady race in the early stages of the 30-lapper, focussing mainly on holding onto his position and keeping out of trouble around the tight and challenging Formula 1 street circuit.
Pascal got as high as fourth after one-third distance but then slipped down to P8 when he entered the pits on lap 18 for his mandatory 10% Pit Boost power increase. His second Attack-Mode on lap 23 took him back up to P6 and he then survived a contact with polesitter Taylor Barnard (McLaren) at the hairpin, remaining in that position for the next few laps.
As Rowland powered to the win from Nyck De Vries (Mahindra) and a penalized Jake Dennis (Andretti), the German was involved in a hard-fought battle for fourth place with Edoardo Mortara (Mahindra) and Nico Mueller (Andretti), but he was unable to find a way past the pair over the last five laps and had to settle for P6.
‟We finished the race in P6 and got a point for the fastest lap,” declared Pascal. “I’m not super happy with the race to be honest. The pace was there but there were three key moments in the race which cost us a much better result. The first one was going out of the Full Course Yellow and the car ahead of me didn’t accelerate. We had contact and I lost another position. The second one was we had a bad Pit Boost and lost a couple of positions there. Trying to move forward again we had contact with someone trying to overtake us in turn 6 which made us again lose positions. The pace was good but there was so much more in it. Now we focus on tomorrow and we’ll give it everything to have a good day.”
Eight points for the top-6 result and one extra for a second successive Fastest Lap now mean that Pascal is on 60 points, 34 behind championship leader Rowland, with the second encounter of the weekend set for tomorrow afternoon in Monaco.
Photos: Courtesy of Porsche
