Pascal Wehrlein addresses 'bad luck' curse as 'fight' to intensify

Pascal Wehrlein is looking to put an end to his and Porsche's "bad luck" curse in Formula E this weekend, at the returning Miami E-Prix. 

The reigning world champion heads to the Miami-Homestead Speedway yet to claim a race victory in Season 11, despite having started on the front row in three of the four races. 

He suffered a terrifying crash whilst fighting for a podium in São Paulo after being hit by Jaguar's Nick Cassidy, before he lost victory in Mexico City due to the timing of a late safety car ending.

In Jeddah last time out, he was hit by Cassidy's team-mate and former title rival Mitch Evans, and went on to endure a software issue during qualifying for the second race in Saudi Arabia the next day. 

As a result, the German driver finds himself eighth in the standings and 43 points behind championship leader Oliver Rowland. 

FE has been extremely competitive once again this season, and whilst this is not to Wehrlein's surprise he does recognise the misfortune himself and Porsche have suffered.

"No, I'm not surprised at all," Wehrlein said in a special episode of the RacingNews365 Podcast. "If you look at our season, out of the four qualifying sessions, I had two pole positions and another second place. 

"Out of the four races, I've been three times on the first row in qualifying. And the fourth qualifying we had a software issue, otherwise we would have been right at the front as well. So the pace is there and we are looking strong. 

"In São Paulo, we had the crash there, the incident, which was quite nasty, but otherwise would have been good at least for a podium there as well. Then we went to Mexico, I finished third. Without that late safety car it would have been better than third.

"A clean weekend, but not very lucky. And then coming to Jeddah, again, started from the first row but then taken out in the fourth or fifth corner by Evans, who, yeah, crashed into my back. And in the second race, we went from P14, I think, to P8 or P7." 

Wehrlein ready for title fight

The team to have capitalised the most on Porsche's bad luck is Nissan, as proven by Rowland having won two of the first four races. 

He has a 17-point lead in the standings over Taylor Barnard, in the Nissan customer team McLaren. 

Porsche's pace has been better than Wehrlein's position in the championship would suggest, although he recognises that a major step has been made by Nissan.

Despite this, the 30-year-old insisted that Porsche has also made an improvement, and that he and the team are ready to fight for the title.

"I would just say we haven't been lucky," continued Wehrlein. "We had a lot of bad luck. The current position and the current points we scored doesn't show our potential and our performance. 

"We just need clean weekends and we keep pushing. If we keep continuing what we did, then I'm pretty sure the bad luck cannot last for too long.

"Obviously it's also in our hands, the competition is strong, but there are no surprises. We saw that Nissan already last year had a good package and were fighting in the front. 

"We could see in testing that they have made another big jump and another big improvement. But so did we. And, therefore, I'm looking forward to the fight."