Pascal Wehrlein has clinched a historic maiden victory for the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team, with team mate Andre Lotterer taking second place in a dominant display in Saturdays Mexico City E-Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
It's the first series victory for both team and driver, and particularly sweet for former F1 driver Wehrlein who missed out here two years ago when he lost to Lucas di Grassi in a run to the finish line.
The 27-year-old German driver started the race from pole position after coming out top in the new-look qualifying session, with ROKiT Venturi Racing's Edoardo Mortara claiming second place on the grid ahead of Lotterer.
Initially it looked as though Wehrlein was lacking pace, and he lost the lead to Mortara in the early attack zone exchanges. Both Porsches were then further demoted by DS TECHEETAH's Jean-Eric Vergne.
But as the race passed the midway point, it was soon apparently that Porsche were playing the long game and prioritising energy saving.
Even though Mortara had built up a two second lead at one point, Wehrlein and Lotterer were able to reel in both him and Vergne with 15 minutes remaining to reclaim the top spots in plenty of time for the chequered flag after 40 laps.
©Porsche
By then the Porsche pair had rapidly pulled out a nine second lead on the field. Although he had more energy than his team mate, the normally aggressive Lotterer opted for safety first and maintained the runner-up position, admitting later that Porsche had told him the priority was to "work as a team".
Wehrlein crossed the finish line with one second on the clock, forcing an additional lap that many teams hadn't been expecting meaning many were caught out on low energy levels, with Jaguar among those caught out and dropping out of the points as a result.
Vergne took third ahead of his team mate and fellow former series champion António Félix da Costa after Mortara declined with energy concerns in the closing minutes and suffered a lock-up on the last lap, ending up in fifth place ahead of Mercedes' Nyck de Vries.
Also taking home points from Mexico were Virgin Envision Racing's Robin Frijns in seventh followed by di Grassi, and Nissan e.Dams pair Sébastien Buemi and Maximilian Gunther rounding out the top ten.
However, di Grassi was subsequently handed a penalty for colliding with Mercedes' Stoffel Vandoorne on the penultimate lap. "After the chequered flag I got the bad news that we got a penalty for an incident with Vandoorne which put us back to 12th, so without any points."
"I got spun around near the end with two laps to go," confirmed former McLaren F1 driver Vandoorne. “It’s frustrating, because without that I would have finished in P5. We lost a lot of points today.”
The only drivers failing to last the distance on Saturday were Mahindra Racing's Alexander Sims who lost drive on the second lap, and Dragon Racing's Antonio Giovinazzi who dropped out midway through.
The result means that Mortara remains ahead of de Vries by five points in the championship after the first three of 16 races in the 2021-22 season.
2022 Mexico City E-Prix race results
© Formula E
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