There was a point in the first half of the Julius Baer Sao Paulo E-Prix where the frustration for TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein was starting to boil over.
The first phase of the race was rough-and-tumble for the championship leader. He was growing increasingly annoyed over Team Radio with the aggressive antics of cars around him – some were lunging at restarts; others were moving around under braking. The traffic jams at the slowest corners on the circuit were also catching him out.
One grievance prompted an outburst with rather fruity language. “Let’s keep it cool, bud, let’s keep it cool,” was his race engineer’s reply. Some recovery drives are rooted in sheer speed, some are the result of balancing energy and pace best.
Some are just about playing the long game. Frustrating as it can be, survival is sometimes the number one priority when you start mid-pack. Wehrlein's rise from 18th into the points, making more ground than any other driver, was not straightforward in the slightest.
It’s easy to assume a driver who gains the most places benefits from consistent progression as they gradually pick off slower cars and while Wehrlein’s Sao Paulo race obviously had a positive trend overall his progress was hardly linear.
A three-place grid penalty for his lap one incident in Cape Town compounded a poor qualifying and the memory of what happened in South Africa may well have contributed to Wehrlein being more circumspect at the start in Brazil. He was visibly cautious into the first corner – whereas NIO 333’s Dan Ticktum, who started next to him on the grid, piled in with little restraint.
Wehrlein’s reward was instant. He was able to pick his way past a couple of cars that had to check up in the traffic, then was well positioned to navigate his way through the aftermath of Norman Nato’s accident at the next corner, which in total propelled Wehrlein up six places to 12th.
That meant he was already on the periphery of the points, which simplified his task but did not make it easy. The next few laps were a minefield – cars appearing left and right, and sometimes stopping suddenly ahead. On the second lap Wehrlein was fortunate to get away with rear-ending Nico Mueller, although Jake Dennis did nip ahead in the process.
Wehrlein had to stay calm. One step back could lead to two forward in the future, as shown when Sebastien Buemi crashed into the back of Max Guenther and delayed Dennis in the process.
His race settled down slightly once he reached 10th place and broke into the points, then received the encouraging message that his battery’s state of charge was comparable to those around him, even if behind those out front.
This meant the German had gained eight places and was still in the same race as the others, all while being conservative on energy usage - within a percentage point of usable energy of his closest rivals. The Porsche 99X Electric has proven to be among the most frugal cars through the first third of Season 9, Here, on a circuit that demanded the highest regen yet this season, Wehrlein was able to spend less time at full throttle on his fastest lap than those around him – pinned flat-out under 10 percent longer than polesitter Stoffel Vandoorne (DS PENSKE), in fact. Had he burned through more energy and made little ground he would have been looking at a very different E-Prix.
Surviving an unintentional assault from Dennis just before mid-distance was a stroke of good fortune, even though it did inflict quite a lot of damage. Wehrlein then spent much of the middle phase of the race in 10th, keeping touch with the lead pack and saving energy.
As others activated ATTACK MODE, he gained further ground and even ran as high as fourth on lap 25 - consuming almost 3% more energy relative to those in the same fight, as he used the free air to create a gap on his rivals behind. Ultimately, his position at this point would be misleading given how it all shook out. His strategy of two late-race ATTACK MODE activations put an extra burden on his energy usage as the race headed into its final throes. After taking his second ATTACK MODE he dropped from fourth to seventh, behind teammate da Costa, while jumping Maximilian Guenther, Jake Hughes and Rene Rast who were previously ahead. Having got himself into an energy deficit in doing so, he was forced to conserve for the remainder of the race rather than push to retake those positions he'd fought so hard to gain. The balance between pushing, progress and usable energy ultimately being stretched a little too far.
Wehrlein sounded slightly frustrated at the flag, and clearly felt more had been possible. But after qualifying poorly, on an all-new track with a lot of jeopardy, the race was always going to be about damage control, and his alternate strategy was still enough to move from 10th to seventh overall over the second half of the E-Prix.
“After a difficult qualifying session, it was more or less about damage control in the race,” he said. “We can be happy having moved up from P18 to P7 to score important points. However, more could have been possible. If we’d done better in qualifying, the race would’ve been easier too. At least we extended our lead in the Drivers’ and Teams’ standings. We’re working hard to keep improving from race to race.”
Others made precious little progress by comparison – the two cars that started around him, Ticktum and Oliver Rowland, were only 11th and 16th at the finish line. This was a race that was easy to get stuck in or crash out of. Instead, Wehrlein survived.
Though he ran out of time to rejoin the lead group and make further progress, these were 11 positions and six valuable points gained rather than anything lost.
We have seen Formula E titles be decided by less. Sometimes, the most frustrating recovery drives can be the most valuable.