Porsche fly out of the starting blocks: 'World title was always the goal'

With the new Gen3 cars in 2023, it was totally unknown which manufacturer had done their homework best. So far, it appears to be Porsche. The first ePrix was won by Jake Dennis, of Avalanche Andretti driving Porsche's powertrain, the other two races in Saudi Arabia were won by Pascal Wehrlein.

Porsche have laid a great foundation for a successful season. Wehrlein is first in the drivers' standings with 68 points, six more than number two Dennis. In the constructors' standings, Porsche are second, two points behind customer team Andretti. GPblog spoke to the German racing stable's team boss about the success.

How unexpected has the start of the season been for you guys?

Florian Modlinger (FM): "It’s been a great season start. But when you see the whole pre-season test and everything, we went into the first race without any expectations because from the timeline and schedule that we had we worked as hard as possible to prepare as best as possible but when you have a completely new car developed, new tyre manufacturer and so on. You only know after the first qualifying where you exactly stand compared to the competition. Therefore the expectations were undefined. We want to compete for podiums and victories. That is our clear target and therefore we work hard. To have such a season start by having the customer team and us winning all three races together with a one-two is fantastic, but only three races out of 16 are done."

What is the key to this success?

FM: "We are not happy where we are starting the race. But our race performance is really really strong, and all the little details count in Formula E. Because you need a car that is well-balanced, to make sure the driver has no balance issues in the corner to keep the minimum speeds up, then you need to have a good set-up and balance out of the corners, straights are an important factor to overtake other cars. We struggled last year with, now we look quite strong in the first two races."

Pascal Wehrlein has made a great start to this season. What do you think of his performance?

FM: "I rate Pascal very high. He’s a professional driver. Mentally strong, delivering when it needs to be delivered. I know him from the past. I competed with him on the other side in DTM in the past when he was running for Mercedes. But also in Formula E when I was at Audi. Everything that he is doing, with dedication and trying to be perfect in every preparation work, like the simulator, focused on every free practice session, be spot on during qualifying and also race performance is extremely good. He is extremely focused and I am happy to work with him."

Antonio Felix da Costa is having a tougher time now. What can he do to get closer to Pascal?

FM: "Antonio showed in the past, also in different race series, how strong he is, he won the championship in Formula E and won races in different race series. He is also a very dedicated race driver to motorsport and to his job. He has at the moment not managed what Pascal has with this new Gen 3 car because he joined us later when we were already testing. In addition, when you change teams you need to accommodate to all systems and functions. What we use in which way. Then we work hard to help him best as possible. To improve race by race, the target must be from our side that he is on the same level as Pascal in the near future."

The goal for this season now can hardly be anything other than to become the world champion right?

FM: "It was from the beginning! It doesn’t matter if we had a good season start or not, as I said before, we want to run for podiums and fight for wins. We want to be able to fight for the championship until the end of the season. A lot of things can happen, we’ve seen in different years and different series but our main target is to show performance on different kinds of race tracks and to fight for the championship until the end of the season."

Also given Andretti's results, it's fair to say that Porsche's powertrain is the best at the moment. How did you guys manage that?

FM: ''I wouldn't only say powertrain, it’s the total car. The total car is the powertrain integrated in the car but you need to have the control systems, the software running properly, the systems working but also the set-up to extract with the powertrain the maximum out of the tyres. This total package at the moment in race performance we are very competitive. In qualifying, you see other teams a lot stronger and that we need to work on. I would see the powertrain as one part of the total car performance. The total car performance, the Porsche cars at the moment look strong in the race. In qualifying, we have to work hard on to close the gap to the front."

What can you work on now (regarding the car) during the season?

FM: "You can work on the set-up. How you use the tyres, how you extract the peak performance of the tyres. But also on the software side. Software systems, and functions, you are allowed to have a software freeze race by race. This means these other development areas, the hardware, the powertrain and the car is fixed from the beginning of the season. But set-up, higher usage, driver and software we can work on race by race."

What is the goal for the upcoming ePrix in India?

FM: "Our target is to prepare as best as possible. A completely new race track, nobody has been there or experienced it. New tarmac. The track was just built. Our target is to be competitive there. From the first three races, we have to work on our weaknesses. Our target must be to improve qualifying and bring Antonio into the range of Pascal. Clearly, we want to have two cars scoring points regularly, and this must be our goal in India," Modlinger concluded.

Next weekend, the Hyderabad ePrix is scheduled in India. The fourth race of the season takes place on Saturday, 11 February, and all the important news can be followed on GPblog. Summaries and results of all other sessions will be available again this weekend.