Formula E: Wehrlein wins race in Jakarta on Saturday

This weekend the 10th and 11th rounds of the World Electric Car Championship will take place in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Last year, for the first time, a Formula E race took place on this new 2.37km circuit near the coast of the Java Sea, and this is not an urban circuit, but a purpose-built stationary circuit suitable for national and international series .

The movement here is organized clockwise, there is more or less a long straight – the start-finish straight, but there is an interesting and quite fast sector that starts after the 3rd turn and continues until the 13th, and in the ring consists of 18 turns in total.

Maserati driver Max Günther seems to have adapted best to this circuit, as well as to the heat (ambient temperatures above 30 degrees) and high humidity. He set the best time in practice and went on to win qualifying, the first time in his career that he achieved such success.

But in the individual standings, the 25-year-old German is only 12th so far, while Jake Dennis, the Andretti driver, is 3rd and he started Saturday’s race in Jakarta from the front row. At the same time, the cars of Pascal Wehrlein, who led the championship before the previous round in Monaco, and Jean-Eric Vergne, a two-time Formula E champion, were on the second row, so you could expect the battle for leadership would be hot, appropriate to the local climate.

Gunther started well, but Wehrlein, in front of Dennis, rushed straight to the attack and already looked like he might take the lead in the first corners, but Max kept the first position. But Stoffel Vandorn, who started fifth, made his way into the top three, but was able to push back both Dennis and Verne.

Wehrlein was one of the first to use the high power mode, which allowed him to get ahead of Günther in round 4. However, Max and Stoffel Vandorn soon followed suit and it was curious how the positions would be distributed after the time. Attack mode expires.

Indeed, Günther soon returned to first position, second was the reigning Formula E champion Vandorn and Wehrlein only third, but he did not give up and decided to use Attack Mode for the second time.

However, Pascal didn’t manage to improve his position until lap 10, when Vandoorne also decided to turn on power mode, which required him to get off the line, and then Wehrlein moved up to 2nd and then to first place, when he went after Attack Mode Günther.

Wehrlein was leading with a third of the distance, Max Günther was second at about seven tenths and Jake Dennis was third. And although the intervals between the cars of the leading group were very short, we did not see any striking attacks and the drivers only changed positions when they activated the high power mode.

However, in one of these situations, Dennis flashed as he overtook Vandorn while actively resisting, but both acted quite correctly.

On lap 20, championship leader Nick Cassidy made a heady attack on Jean-Eric Vergne – it was a battle for fifth position. But the Frenchman blocked his lane quite hard and there was contact between the cars. Both stayed on the track, but Nick complained over the radio that the opponent wasn’t acting quite right.

At this stage of the race, Dennis overtook Gunther due to attack mode, moved up to 2nd position and then started to prepare an attack on Wehrlein, but was slightly hampered by Max as the German car stayed close to Jake’s Andretti. In addition, on the radio, the team instructed their rider to attack Dennis, but Andretti of course overheard this and Jake himself increased the pressure on Wehrlein.

An interesting situation arose when three riders were fighting for the lead at the same time and it was not clear who would take over. But both Wehrlein’s and Dennis’ cars have the same Porsche powerplants, so the forces are roughly equal, and Pascal managed to hold on to first place.

However, both of his pursuers had slightly more energy left in the cars’ batteries, so it was expected that they would try to make use of this advantage closer to the finish.

Five laps from the end of the race, the top five looked like this: Wehrlein was still in the lead, less than four-tenths behind Dennis, followed by Gunther, and fourth and fifth positions were occupied by Vandorn and Vergne, two DS Penske horsemen. But they were already losing more than two seconds to Max and did not claim the podium.

Interestingly enough, the race went off without any major incidents, meaning there was no need to raise yellow flags or send out a safety car for a long time. But it only lasted until 34 laps.

Mitch Evans’ Jaguar was hit from behind by Sam Bird, his partner. The New Zealander’s car, who was previously running ninth, overturned, went off the track and was unable to continue. By the way, looking ahead, I must say that Byrd also received some kind of punishment for this trick: a little later, Jake Hughes knocked him off the track in a similar situation.

The period of yellow flags did not last long, and a lap before the finish the fight resumed and turned into a short spurt, which was to determine the winner. But even though Wehrlein’s Porsche batteries had less than one percent of energy left, he was still the first to see the black and white checkered flag.

Dennis’ car crossed the finish line 0.477 seconds after him – Jake did everything he could, fought to the end, although of course he was offended, as he was still so close to victory. For him, however, this is the third podium in a row, and that stability certainly deserves praise.

Victory in Saturday’s race in Jakarta prevented Pascal Wehrlein from returning to the championship lead, Nick Cassidy remained in the front row, but New Zealand rider Envision Racing’s advantage was reduced to just two points. A frustrated Jake Dennis is still third, but promised to fight for pole position first on Sunday, and then victory in the second race of the Indonesian weekend.