Lady Luck is a blessing and a curse for Porsche in Miami

04/12/2025 05:54 PM

Luck was the word of the day for TAG Heuer Porsche at the Miami E-Prix – one driver had it, the other didn't.

As a plethora of drivers succumbed to penalties as they ran out of time to complete their final six minute use of Attack Mode, landing them penalties, Pascal Wehrlein's final activation – coming with four laps to go after a late race restart – was only four minutes. There was enough time left in the race to complete his use, and use it to take the win.

"It was a bit of a lucky win," he admitted afterwards. "Somewhere on the podium or top five would have been possible otherwise. But still, I think we had enough bad luck this season that we can also be lucky for once."

Wehrlein came into the season as reigning champion, but a crash at the season opener in Sao Paulo, followed by a 15th and an eighth in Jeddah mean that aside from a podium at round two in Mexico City, there's been little to celebrate until the Miami win.

"We'll take that. very happy about it," he said of his win at Homestead-Miami Speedway. "Strategy was good. Obviously was crucial to only have the four minutes of Attack Mode left for after the red flag — we luckily had some of the others six minutes to do. So that saved us."

On the other side of the garage, it wasn't talk of a potential top five or podium, but rather the win. Antonio Felix da Costa had started the race higher up the grid, third to Wehrlein's 12th, and ran in the top three for much of the race until the lap 20 yellow flag. Crucially, however, that was the lap where he had taken his final Attack Mode, and while the race pauses, the countdown of remaining additional power and four-wheel drive from Attack Mode doesn't, so when the race restarted, he was unable to benefit and was left at a disadvantage compared to everyone around him.

A near-certain win lost, da Costa was still able to find the positives from the weekend, despite the hurt of another lost win.

"Positives — there are many, actually," he said. "We’ve done a very, very strong weekend. We were second in both free practices, we qualified third, and we executed the perfect race. We were up on energy on everybody by quite a bit. I’m just sad or angry about the ultimate result, but the positives to take away are massive."

Wehrlein's triumph was something that da Costa somewhat foretold in pre-season, and admitted that if it improves the spectacle for fans, it is a good thing, even if drivers like him on Sunday end up suffering from it.

"I said before the season started that we were going to see a lot of people winning races with a bit of luck, with stuff like this," he said. "I could have taken my six minutes Attack Mode later as well to make sure that nobody has Attack over me or whatever. And we took our margins purely for this reason – those guys that had the six minutes, they left it to the last six laps, and they got massively cut out.

"A bad day for us if it’s still a podium, and I will take that every time, especially if I look at where I was 12 months ago. But you know, the rules are the rules, and I think if it makes the people at home be on the edge of their seats until the last lap, fine. Today it hurts me, maybe tomorrow it’ll help me."