Calm was preached in Stuttgart after the excellent performance of the Porsche-powered cars in Mexico, recalling how already in 2022 a German car had won at Hermanos Rodriguez only to then suffer on the other tracks. The Mexican one was in fact an atypical track, outside the city walls and above all located at high altitudes, where the air is thinner with all the resulting consequences on performance. The Diriyah round is a completely different story in terms of circuit layout, temperatures and track cleanliness, with a lot of dirt on the trajectory, but all this was not enough to subvert the previous result. Porsche powertrains prevail again in the first E-Prix in Saudi Arabia, this time with reversed roles with Pascal Wehrlein preceding Jake Dennis.
In the Gen2 era, Wehrlein could be heard complaining about the lack of pace from his car, unable to defend the good positions often conquered in qualifying, a scenario apparently reversed with the third generation cars. In Diriyah, Wehrlein and Dennis conquered the top two steps of the podium thanks to their race pace, furiously recovering from ninth and eleventh position on the grid. The goodness and efficiency of the Porsche powertrain are there for all to see, but beyond that there is more. One might wonder why the two standard bearers of Porsche and Andretti weren’t able to express the same competitiveness also in qualifying. The question is answered in energy management and mechanical trim, two apparently unrelated but in reality closely interconnected aspects. In fact, a balanced set-up makes it possible to have less slipping of the car and maintain a greater cornering distance so that, in addition to the direct gain in lap time, less energy is also spent to regain speed on exit, maintaining the inertia of the motion . Both Dennis and Wehrlein pressed their rivals not so much on the straight, but more on the long snake where the overall balance of the car emerges.
The explanation for why Porsche and Andretti were unable to express the same competitiveness seen in the race in qualifying could lie precisely in the set-up compromise. The Hankook tires proved to be particularly difficult to get up to temperature, making it difficult for the teams to interpret and forcing compromise choices. Stiffer set-ups force the rubber to work harder, bringing it up to temperature quickly, benefiting from the speed in qualifying but sacrificing that mechanical grip that softer set-ups could instead guarantee. It thus happens to see cars like NIO, again excellent in the second row with Ticktum, sinking after the traffic lights have gone out, or others, like Porsche and Andretti, which, once the tires have warmed up after several laps, come back from the rear. Sam Bird himself, who took off like lightning after the traffic lights went out, suggests that Jaguar had a set-up more focused on generating heat in the rubber as soon as possible. However, much of the credit for the Saudi success goes to Wehrlein and Dennis themselves, the best interpreters of the new generation of cars at the time, a quality that emerges even more on a track like Diriyah which rewards confidence in the vehicle.
Remaining on the subject of set-ups, just as in Mexico the comparison between Nissan and McLaren remains merciless, both equipped with the same engine. If in recent seasons the Japanese manufacturer has recognized a lack of performance from its powertrain, seeing how the Woking team is instead managing to exploit it suggests that the current critical issues for the French-Japanese team are different. Things are definitely not better for the DS-Maserati duo, lost in the desert of Saudi Arabia after having also been in Mexico. The championship is long, but with this Porsche, this Andretti and these Wehrlein and Dennis we will need to roll up our sleeves as soon as possible.
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