Pascal Wehrlein drove a great race in both attack and defence today in the second Tokyo E-Prix encounter of the weekend to score a superb second place finish and move back up into P2 in the championship table.
The factory TAG Heuer Porsche driver started third on the grid after a storming performance in today’s qualifying sessions and for the first 15 laps was happy to sit behind leader Dan Ticktum (Cupra Kiro) in second place.
On lap 16 the MIM-contracted drive pulled the pin to move into the lead and then on lap 23, incredibly, managed to hold on to the top slot while taking his first attack mode, which put him in a great position to fight it out for the win with his chief rival, championship leader Oliver Rowland (Nissan) in the second part of the race.
When Pascal’s second attack mode finished on lap 26, Rowland had 40 seconds of power boost advantage, which he used to retake first place. Contact side-by-side in the straight on lap 28 was an indication of the fierce battle between the two as Rowland and Wehrlein headed towards the final few laps.
But any real chance of a win for Pascal was thwarted when Taylor Barnard (McLaren) went into the wall, leading to a late appearance of the Safety Car, and when it went back into the pits, the one lap remaining was not sufficient for Pascal to mount a serious attack on Rowland and he had to settle for a hard-fought but well-deserved second place.
“It was an important day in general, I think, as yesterday was very tricky,” declared Pascal. “At the moment, I’m still a bit disappointed because I think we could have done better, but there was just no way to defend my position when Oliver (Rowland) was in attack mode. They did everything right and probably we need to analyse what we could have done better. Still, second place is a good result and together with qualifying in P3, it’s a very strong day for our package, which on the other side then makes all of us happy.”
With the 18 points for second place today, Wehrlein moves back into P2 overall in the championship with 84 points, with leader Rowland on 161. With seven rounds remaining, the next Formula E double-header event will be in Shanghai (China) in a fortnight’s time.
Photos: Courtesy of Porsche
