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Formula E points leader Pascal Wehrlein has given his opinion for the first time on the controversial comments made by title rival Jake Dennis after the pair fought for the lead of the first Jakarta E-Prix earlier this month.
Dennis got a run on Wehrlein heading into the first corner but factory Porsche driver Wehrlein shut the door forcefully on his customer Andretti counterpart. They went on to finish first and second in that order, marking Wehrlein’s first triumph since his Diriyah double in January.
The outcome of the incident – which Dennis said required him to “hit so much pressure to avoid hitting the back of him – from Dennis’s perspective was “ridiculous”.
He then proceeded to say “we can’t protest against them because they have a Porsche powertrain”.
The Race understands that the comments were ill-received by senior Porsche management above and beyond the works team itself.
Wehrlein told The Race that he was “quite surprised to read that and about protesting us and stuff like that”.
“I didn’t want to say a lot about it and I still don’t want to say a lot about it today really,” said Wehrlein, who leads Dennis by two points in the championship standings. “But I’m not a driver who took out Porsche cars already this season. He did.”
That was a reference to Dennis’s rash manoeuvre in the first Berlin E-Prix, when an attempted move went wrong and he speared an innocent Antonio Felix da Costa out of contention.
Wehrlein caveated his opinions by stating “in general, I think Andretti and us we definitely have a good collaboration”, but he added that “comments [about whether], ‘we protest our sister team’ doesn’t help”.
“I think it’s not the right approach and not the right attitude.”
Wehrlein and Dennis have clashed several times before on track, notably at the 2021 Diriyah E-Prix when the two collided at the first complex. The incident resulted in Dennis retiring and Wehrlein bizarrely using a wall to shed damaged front bodywork.
Talking about Saturday’s crucial Portland E-Prix, Wehrlein told The Race that there will be no specific emphasis on qualifying because the race will offer so much opportunity for overtaking throughout the race.
“It feels like qualifying is not very important this weekend,” said Wehrlein.
‘If you’re starting fifth or 10th, the outcome in the race will be the same, maybe even further back [the same is true]. Where in Jakarta, for example, you felt like you needed to be in the top five.
“There’s not really the benefit of starting at the front [at Portland]. If you’re truly leading the race, you don’t want to be in that position on the last lap.”
Dennis said he expects the Portland race to be one of near-continuous management, describing it as potentially “the hardest race there is this year, definitely in terms of energy saving”.
“London and Rome will be very much the opposite,” he said. “[This is the] last proper big energy save of the season, but we just need to keep it clean,” he told The Race.
‘I think the race is going to be so chaotic in the first like 20 laps, if I can just stay out of trouble, ideally not lead and just survive in like third to fifth roughly and then try and do the damage at the end.
“But I think everyone is going to have a similar mentality; no one wants to lead so it’s going to be a really big stop-start race, people lifting so early down the straight when the lift points are already really early. It’s going to be chaotic.”
