Welcome to the Indonesian leg of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, a racetrack as much about grit and endurance as it is about kilowatts and carbon fibre.
For Porsche, though, this sort of pressure cooker environment is a proving ground.
Coming off a record-setting first half of the season, the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team rolls into Jakarta leading the Teams’ Championship with 191 points. That’s one more than Nissan, in case anyone’s keeping score. No other manufacturer has racked up more fastest laps this season.
If their drivers look a little bleary-eyed, cut them some slack. Pascal Wehrlein and António Félix da Costa just wrapped up 24 hours of non-stop racing at Le Mans.
Wehrlein, sharing a Porsche 963 with Felipe Nasr and Nick Tandy, bagged a respectable P9 in Hypercar on debut. Da Costa finished ninth in LMP2, racing for a privateer team. No champagne showers, perhaps, but solid mileage logged and mental sharpness honed.
Unlike the usual double-header format, Jakarta’s only offering up one race this time. One shot. One bullet in the chamber. And Porsche is very, very good at single-race weekends. Five podiums out of six in São Paulo, Mexico City, and Miami. Consistency, it seems, is their quiet superpower.
The Jakarta International E-Prix Circuit is no walk in the (tropical) park. At 2.370 km and 18 turns, it’s a cocktail of speed and technicality. You’ve got long straights to stretch the legs and a flowing middle sector that demands finesse. The final sector, particularly Turn 18, a narrow left-hand twist after a hairpin, test brakes, bravery, and bandwidth. One misstep and it’s race over.
Pascal Wehrlein calls it “a very cool track in extreme conditions,” while da Costa’s got fond memories from 2023, when both he and Wehrlein scored valuable points in a humid Jakarta double-header. The tyres take a pounding, the regen systems work overtime, and the driver’s ability to stay cool, quite literally, can make or break a podium charge.
Jakarta’s forecast could throw a curveball too. After wet races in Monaco, Tokyo, and Shanghai, it’s entirely possible we’ll see puddles on the circuit again.
Still, Porsche is prepared. “We’ve practised a whole host of scenarios in the simulator,” says Florian Modlinger, Director of Factory Motorsport Formula E. “We feel ready for a challenging race.”
With five races left in the season and only one point separating Porsche from Nissan, every corner, every overtake, every bit of regen harvested under braking counts.
Wehrlein sits second in the Drivers’ Championship with 103 points for the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team, trailing Oliver Rowland’s 171. Da Costa, with 88 points, rounds out the top three.
*Race 12 of the 2024/2025 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship kicks off on 21 June at 15:05 local time
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