Jaguar powertrains have dominated the last three races in the all-electric championship, with Mitch Evans winning twice for the British marque and customer team Envision taking victory last time out in Berlin courtesy of Nick Cassidy.
It’s signified a big turnaround in the championship battle, as Porsche hit the ground running with the new-for-2023 Gen3 cars, winning four of the first five races with its drivers Pascal Wehrlein and da Costa, as well as Jake Dennis for customer squad Andretti Autosport.
While Wehrlein and Porsche still lead both the drivers’ and teams’ championships by four and 15 points respectively, da Costa believes the threat from Jaguar has been there since the very start of the season.
“I think we’ve probably equalled out now, but I have to say, they have always been strong,” said da Costa, who sits 32 points behind Wehrlein in the standings ahead of the Monaco E-Prix this weekend.
“They just haven’t executed the perfect start of the year, more or less the start of the year I’ve had against Pascal.
“I don’t think they suddenly appeared, they’ve always been there. Now obviously they’ve got their stuff together and all four cars are executing incredible results.
“For sure, [it's] very tight and [they're] tough opponents but it’s good to have that. Everyone in the team is feeling how hard we want to win it and it keeps everyone honest and motivated.”
A weak point of the Porsche has been the car’s one-lap pace, with both da Costa and Wehrlein missing out on the qualifying duels at various points this season.
But while this is an area that da Costa admits both he and the team need to work on, he has no doubts about the performance of the car in the race.
“I'm still very confident that we have a very strong car in race trim,” added da Costa.
“Qualifying it’s a bit on me, a bit on the confidence I have with the brakes.
“I just cannot maximise what I have at the moment and we’re working towards that, and I think once we do that and we’re able to start every race in the top six, it will make our life a lot easier for ourselves.”
