While Jake Dennis clearly had a very justifiable claim to have been tremendously unlucky not to have won Sunday’s second Tokyo EPrix, both Nico Mueller and Taylor Barnard also have claims to feel hard done by.
Mueller started the race from 10th on the grid and ran steadily in the opening stages of the race on a largely wet set up on his Porsche 99X Electric.
But when Pepe Marti ended his race in the barriers, after being fed into them by Sebastien Buemi on lap 15, an opportunity piqued the interest of the Porsche strategists and Mueller headed pitward to change to four dry set-up Hankook’s. Only problem was that three of them made it to the pit apron.
“We were discussing already during the phase before the yellow flag, then the yellow came, and the final call was made,” Mueller told FEN.
“So, Marius (engineer Marius Meier-Diedrich) and the team, they made a great call then, to be honest.
“We just unfortunately lost more than 10 seconds during the stop itself, which obviously really hurt.
Mueller said that he recalled looking in his rearview mirror and he said to himself “Guys, one tyre is missing here, what’s happening?”
“I think there was an issue with communication somewhere, I don’t really know yet, to be honest.”
When asked by FEN if he thought a possible win could have been on the cards, Mueller said that he thought winning “would have been hard, but a podium was on the cards, yeah.”
Barnard: 10-seconds from glory!
Taylor Barnard starred in the opening exchanges of the race after rising from fourth on the grid to the lead by lap 19. But just before he did that, knowing the track was drying fast and a cross over point began to manifest itself a few laps earlier.
The DS Penske team eyed a switch to dry pressure set tyres and were within an ace of making it happen. But the timing of the FCY deployment wasn’t quite right for where Barnard was on the circuit at the time, as opposed to the slightly further back Mueller who could enter the pits.
“It came out literally as I exited the last corner and finished as I was coming into the last corner,” Barnard explained to FEN.
“So, it was perfectly wrong. The red flag was way too late (to try it again), so honestly I really don’t think there’s anything left on the table.”
Barnard’s team boss, Phil Charles, believed that Barnard could have won the race had he been able to enter the pits under the FCY to take fresh tyres.
“He just went past the pit lane, and we missed doing it by just under 10-seconds,” a rueful Phil Charles, DS Penske’s deputy Team Principal told FEN.
“We calculated we’d have won the race if we’d have done that. We just can’t get a break.”
