Was the Pascal Wehrlein and Jake Dennis incident last Sunday afternoon Formula E’s own Senna and Prost 1990 Suzuka moment?
Sounds outrageously fanciful and admittedly a bit of a stretch but in the mind of Andretti team principal, Roger Griffiths, it was a flashing presence in his mind soon after the end of Sunday’s finale at London Excel.
What had been a brilliantly executed strategy of banking energy in the first half of the race for a poor track position placed Dennis, a legacy of rear end instability in qualifying, looked at one stage to be an ideal plan to snatch the title from his occasional nemesis Pascal Wehrlein. It was beautifully poised until it wasn’t.
There remains the possibility that Dennis’ tyre was actually punctured by Antonio Felix da Costa’s Jaguar and not Wehrlein. We may never know. What is known is that in a four car melee that also included Joel Eriksson, Dennis was bundled out by the Porsche and all hope was lost.
“We thought we played it perfectly as we’d been able to bank the energy that we needed, we had the attack mode advantage, we had track position, and we had a lot of friends out there doing what they could to help us,” Griffiths outlined to Formula E Notebook.
“But unfortunately, it seemed a little reminiscent of a certain driver pairing (Senna and Prost) in Suzuka many years ago, knowing that if neither car finished, then somebody was automatically world champion.”
It was pretty clear that in Griffiths mind Dennis was ‘the Prost’ and Wehrlein ‘the Senna’ during that crucial and action-packed phase of the race where the two were in contact.
Almost 26 years on from that infamous autumn day at Suzuka this time it was only the ‘Senna’ who survived the contact, instead of both walking back to the pits almost in unison. Instead, Dennis gingerly toured back to his box, where a punctured tyre was replaced and he went on his way to the dampest squib of endings to an otherwise brilliant campaign.
Dennis could almost touch the champion trophy at stage as he had more attack mode time on Wehrlein and an effective overlap, except this was Excel, a track very challenging to overtake cleanly on. In a way there may always have been some kind of flashpoint anyway.
As well as what was going on on-track there was the febrile atmosphere of the paddock in light of the collusion/orchestration vibe that had washed its way in to the paddock. Griffiths felt its presence almost viscerally, and there appeared to be a custodian of the phenomenon. Herr F. Modlinger of Weissach!
“Certainly, there was a lot of conversations going on about, how could we help each other, shall we say, and he (Modlinger) knew that there was no point coming to me, because we were in the fight,” said Griffiths.
“We’ve each got friends up and down the paddock, and I think there was an element of concern that Porsche had an opportunity to win all three championships, which I don’t think was going to be good for anybody.
“I think Mitch was realistic about his chances, but they (Jaguar) focused on the team’s championship. We knew that it was out of our reach after yesterday, we focused on the drivers’ championships, and I think others around us respected that as well.”
It also must be noted for the record that Dennis conducted himself with absolute class in the face of such dejection last weekend. His manner was of the upmost professionalism, something which is scant consolation as a whole in the short-term but will see his reputation grow even more in the longer term.
