Pascal Wehrlein on his failed Formula E title defence: "My hunger is now quite a lot bigger"

Porsche won the teams' and manufacturers' world championship titles last season, but failed to defend Pascal Wehrlein's drivers' title. Wehrlein was able to hold onto second place in the championship behind Oliver Rowland for most of the season. A surprising series of victories by Nick Cassidy and Jaguar TCS Racing at the end of the season ultimately pushed Wehrlein up to third place. The German has now commented on the reasons for the failed title defence and is also looking ahead to next season.

Oliver Rowland was a force to be reckoned with last season. His strong consistency up to the middle of the season gave him a big lead in the drivers' championship. So big that not even a dip in performance towards the end of the season could prevent an early coronation after the second race of the double-header in Berlin. Season 11 seemed to have been a frustrating one for Pascal Wehrlein. While he showed strong results in qualifying in particular, it was often impossible to build on this in the races and he fell back or was involved in accidents.

"I feel like this season has been a season of real effort, putting in the effort. Because, after such an incident, the team had to put in a huge effort to give me a competitive car again, build up a new car," Wehrlein told RacingNews365 alluding to his horror crash in Sao Paulo, in which he rolled over. "Then we a couple of times had incidents, like in Jeddah, where we DNF'd starting from P2, a couple of safety cars and bad luck on the attack mode. I can remember just out of my head, Mexico, Tokyo, London, and I'm sure there was one or two others. It just didn't always go our way", the German continued.

"I'm very happy that the season now is over"

"At the same time I did kind of a double programme with driving the first time in Le Mans," he adds. "and on both sides, I just wanted to show my best possible performance and succeed. Therefore, I put in a lot of effort for both and I'm very happy that the season now is over, yeah, that I can recharge and bounce back next year."

Although Wehrlein is just happy to be able to rest a little, he already has his sights firmly set on winning the drivers' championship next season: "My hunger is very big. I think my hunger now, by not winning it this year again, it's quite a lot bigger if I would have won again."

"I will work really hard again"

"Right now, I just feel exhausted and ready for some time off. But you know me, and you know that, yeah, after a couple of days and a bit of holiday, I will put in the effort again and work really hard to make next season very strong", assured the 30-year-old.

After the eleventh season, Jean-Eric Vergne remains the only driver in the history of Formula E to defend the drivers' championship in season 5 after winning the title in season 4 - back then with Techeetah. The next driver to get this opportunity is the new world champion Oliver Rowland. However, due to a recognisable drop in performance at Nissan towards the end of the season and the generally high level of competitiveness in Formula E, he is likely to find it extremely difficult.