Monaco Increase Management’s Pascal Wehrlein kept his cool and drove a superb tactical race to finish runner-up in the Formula E season finale in London, a result that crowned the 29-year-old as 2024 World Champion.
The TAG-Heuer Porsche factory driver, who started this final race of the year with an advantage of 3 and 4 points over his two Jaguar rivals, Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy, steered his way through all the drama in the final stages to emerge as champion, despite finishing second to Oliver Rowland (Nissan).
The three title contenders were running together at the front for a large part of the race, with Wehrlein looking to repeat yesterday’s successful late Attack Mode strategy, and when Rowland moved past Cassidy into third on lap 29, the Kiwi touched with Guenther (Maserati) and retired with a puncture.
The other crucial moments of the race were Evans’ two activation attempts, the first adjudged to have been done under the Safety Car, and the second when the Jaguar man missed the loop and handed back the lead to Rowland.
Wehrlein on the other hand was again fast on pace and up on energy, and put his rivals under pressure throughout, and after successfully tripping his activation on lap 34, he could comfortably keep Evans behind as he headed to the chequered flag to take the runner-up slot – and the 2024 title – behind Rowland.
“It’s just awesome,” declared Pascal after the race. “We knew coming here that we had a fair chance of winning, even though we were probably not the favourites as we had never performed super well on this track. We knew we had to put everything together, you need to have clean laps and a good qualifying. You try to outperform the car and execute perfectly in the race and I think that’s exactly what we did. I’m super-proud of the whole team. Year to year, we have improved, now I’ve been with Porsche for four years and all the hard work and effort we put in together has finally paid off. So, I want to thank my whole team and everyone who put so much effort and energy into making this happen. I think we had some tough fights this year, but overall, it has been a very cool season. A lot of drivers were in contention and a lot of different winners as we see very often. The cool thing is three drivers close in the last race and whoever would finish in front would win the championship so I think the fans cannot wish for more. Hopefully the race today was also nice to watch!”
With today’s result, Porsche also sealed the inaugural Manufacturers’ Trophy, finishing ahead of Jaguar by seven points. Commenting on the victory by Pascal and Porsche, Monaco Increase Management CEO Salvatore Gandolfo, who was present at the ExCel Centre, said: “Today was a fantastic result for Pascal and the entire factory Porsche team, who I would like to thank for their great efforts and teamwork throughout the year. Pascal and I have been together for a few years now and it gives me great pleasure to win this world title, which is the first for me as a manager, and I feel sure that it is the start of something big. So, my sincerest congratulations go to Pascal, he drove wonderfully all weekend and fully deserved the title, which I would like to dedicate to my colleague and friend, the late Alberto Antonini, who began his path with MIM at the same time as Pascal.”
