How Wehrlein's Diriyah double reveals Formula E's form book shake-up

By:

Jake Boxall-Legge

Jan 30, 2023, 11:31 AM

After Porsche-powered drivers locked out the top two positions to open Formula E's new Gen3 era in Mexico, the order was reversed in Diriyah. Ex-Formula 1 driver Pascal Wehrlein's factory car headed Jake Dennis's customer Andretti machine in both races under the Riyadh lights in a display that leaves little doubt as to which package currently has the edge

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Three races in, and there’s a pattern emerging in Formula E’s new era. After Valencia’s pre-season testing, you’d have been hard pressed to predict that a Porsche would win the first three races of the season, given the German giant’s tepid showing in December. Yet, as the rest of the field tries to gather some semblance of a pecking order, Weissach’s finest has firmly become the manufacturer to beat.

The consummate ease with which Jake Dennis and Pascal Wehrlein scarpered off into the distance in the Mexico City opener was a hint of Porsche’s progress around the Christmas and New Year breaks. But it was nothing more than that; Porsche had dominated proceedings at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez last season, yet failed to follow up on that in the succeeding rounds. To commandeer and butcher a phrase from footballing parlance, could Porsche do it on a cold, dark night in Riyadh?

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Jake Boxall-Legge F1 Writer

Jake studied engineering at university, as his original ambition was to design racing cars. He was bad at that, and thus decided to write about them instead with an equally limited skillset. The above article is a demonstration of that. In his spare time, Jake enjoys people, places, and things.