16/07/2025 16:05
Pascal Wehrlein was left in disbelief after his "insane" fall from
pole position to 16th in the second race of Formula E's Berlin
E-Prix, which allowed Oliver Rowland to secure the world title.
The 2024 FE world champion had entered the double-header in the
German capital 69 points adrift of Rowland, but managed to reduce
his deficit to 47 points by the conclusion of qualifying for the
second race. Following a dominant pole position for the second
race, there was a genuine sense that the championship would
miraculously be decided in London. However, Wehrlein fell to almost
to the back of the field once his first use of attack mode had
concluded, which lasted for two minutes. It was immediately
questioned why the German's first attack mode was two minutes long,
with the majority of his rivals having opted for two periods of
four minutes each. What was looking like the weekend of dreams,
quickly became one of horror, as he tumbled to 16th as Rowland
clinched the crown after crossing the line in fourth. Wehrlein was
adamant after the race that something was "completely wrong", due
to the speed of which he was swamped by the pack. "Yeah, for sure,
the two-minute attack mode didn't help," Wehrlein told
RacingNews365 . And yeah, honestly, we are still analysing what
went wrong, because something went completely wrong. "I mean,
starting first and finishing P16 is insane. So yeah, very
disappointing race which looked like a promising day after
qualifying. "No pace, maybe wrong call on strategy, but yeah, for
sure, not satisfying." Wehrlein 'not disappointed' Rowland's
fourth-place finish was enough to become world champion due to
having needed to score 11 points more than Wehrlein. Throughout
the Berlin event, the former F1 driver had stressed he was not even
thinking about the chance of defending his title due to Rowland's
advantage. Wehrlein's frustration was more due to the way his car
changed, from being unstoppable in qualifying to being unable to
score a point in the race. "I'm not disappointed about the title
being decided now, because I was not thinking about it anyways,"
added Wehrlein. "I'm more disappointed about the race, like the
result, because it should never happen if you're dominating in
qualifying that you just have no pace and drop out off the points,
and almost, yeah, being last. There's no positive about this race."
