Porsche Finds Surprising Pace In Pre-Season Formula E Testing

Porsche’s premier season in Formula E began just one year ago, and through that tumultuous year the Porsche 99X Electric found a few moments in the sun, scoring a decent points haul across the 2019-20 season. While most of those points were found by definitive team Number One Andre Lotterer, his teammate Neel Jani managed to secure a few for himself as well. Jani’s role as a development driver was pretty obvious from the outset, being that he used most of the Season Six races as extended test sessions for the car, putting in the yeoman’s work to ensure that the Porsche Formula E effort would improve in future seasons.

We always knew that Jani’s role in the race team would be short lived, and he was replaced by Pascal Wehrlein for Season Seven. Testing for season seven kicked off this weekend, and Porsche was really in the thick of it.

Two days of pre-season testing were held at the Valencia, Spain-based Circuit Ricardo Tormo. On Saturday Porsche driver Lotterer posted the fastest session of the day during a rain-shortened session. The Belgian-German driver posted a 1min12.519sec lap time, despite not using his allowed extra 35 kW boost of energy. Interestingly, this lap from Lotterer was a new record for FE cars at the circuit, clearing last year’s fastest test time (set by Maximilian Gunther) by more than 2.5 seconds.

As luck would have it, Lotterer’s Saturday time was bested by reigning Formula E champion Antonio Felix da Costa, who set a time 0.007 seconds quicker on Sunday morning. During the Sunday afternoon session, teams all agreed to run a full 45 minutes plus a lap simulation race event, which saw Lotterer finish third. It isn’t known exactly how much of this test session practice scrimmage was structured, but a fake podium place in this fake race bodes well for Porsche’s 2021 efforts.