How Dennis and Lynn Dominated London, and What it Means for their Futures
Alex Lynn (copyright FIA Formula E)
There may have been disputes over the quality of the circuit, but the quality of the victories on the London E-Prix weekend was indisputable. Jake Dennis played a strategic game to perfection in race one, then Alex Lynn followed up on his uniformly excellent qualifying performances in race two to win and put himself in the shop window for next season.
Race one
Dennis dominated race one (copyright FIA Formula E)
When Jake Dennis won in Valencia, there were caveats to his excellent lights-to-flag victory. It was on an atypical circuit for Formula E, on the day following Formula E’s most disastrous race of the Gen2 era. Bringing the car home was the primary concern of the majority of the field amid energy management concerns, and Dennis, while performing excellently, had taken advantage of wet-dry qualifying to take pole position.
While Saturday was similarly wet, and there was the additional challenge of the EXCEL Arena’s outdoor section progressing into a dry (obviously) indoor complex, Dennis took second place in superpole on a track which, notwithstanding its uniqueness, was more of a regular all-electric circuit. That qualifying performance led into a tremendous, strategically excellent, race victory.
This demonstrates that Dennis, who has frequently had the measure in recent races of BMW i.Andretti teammate Maximilian Günther, is capable of adapting to the very specialised demands of Formula E, and of finding pace on circuits far different to those on which he has spent most of his career.
Lynn had led away from pole position in the Mahindra, but Dennis said early in the race to his engineer that he felt his compatriot was holding him up. Waiting until Lynn engaged his second Attack Mode, Dennis took him in the hairpin then succeeded in pulling out a lead in spite of waiting to trigger Attack mode for the second time until much later in the race. For Lynn, the problem of the Mahindra lacking the race pace to follow up on qualifying remained, and he fell back behind Nyck de Vries in the Mercedes EQ in the late stages of the race.
Dennis on the podium (copyright FIA Formula E)
For Dennis, though, this was a deserved victory that ought to make him a certainty to remain with Andretti when the rebranded team enters the 2022 season.
Race two
Stoffel Vandoorne (copyright FIA Formula E)
The second race looked like it was there for the taking by Stoffel Vandoorne, but the Mercedes driver was taken out by Oliver Rowland, the second-placed Nissan edams driver reporting afterwards that he took the blame, having gone into the double hairpins too fast on cold brakes. For Vandoorne, it was too much to take, and he was seen being consoled by Mercedes EQ Team Principal Ian James in the garage after his retirement from the race.
Another driver who needed reassuring words from his team management was Antonio Felix da Costa, who had been on another epic fightback from the back of the grid when he decided to dart to the left of a weaving Andre Lotterer, but was squeezed into the wall by the Porsche driver. Lotterer is experienced enough to know what he was doing, and his claims afterwards that da Costa took an unnecessary risk by trying the manoeuvre was not a satisfactory explanation for the incident.
Up at the front, Lynn led after the accident between the leaders, and yet under the Safety Car, Audi’s Lucas di Grassi tried exploiting a loophole that looks set to be closed before the next E-Prix. The Brazilian dived into the pits, then exited the pits in the lead of the race behind the Safety Car. This was possible because the pit-lane 50kph speed limit was still quick enough to dart to the front of the line of cars.
(copyright FIA Formula E)
It was, regardless of being completely against the spirit of the race, a clever move from a driver who is a brilliant mind and is often a step ahead of the opposition. It was punished with a time penalty by the FIA, because contrary to what he had thought, di Grassi’s car telemetry showed that he had not quite managed to stop fully in his pit box before proceeding back out.
Lynn raced his own race and allowed di Grassi and Audi to argue the point with the stewards, crossing the line as the first classified driver and claiming his first race win in Formula E, and his first single-seater victory since the 2016 GP2 Series.
What next for Lynn?
Lynn after the race (copyright FIA Formula E)
It seems odd that Lynn is celebrating his first Formula E win while also staring at the potential of being dropped by his team, but that is how it is. Mahindra have signed Oliver Rowland for 2022, the Nissan driver impressed by Dilbagh Gill’s eagerness to sign him and with the Indian marque’s commitment to participating in the forthcoming Gen3 rules era. Alexander Sims, signed as a free agent after leaving BMW at the end of the 2021 season, already has a contract for the upcoming season. All this means that Lynn, who has outdone Sims in qualifying and also leads him by 78 points to 44 in the Driver’s Championship, is likely to be looking for a drive yet again at the end of the season.
The British driver has had to accept this as his lot in recent seasons - he joined Virgin Racing, Jaguar, and Mahindra as a mid-season substitute before driving himself to a full-season contract at two of those three teams - and yet it doesn’t seem to be a reflection of his overall speed that he has ended up on the market after each of his two full seasons.
Lynn struggled badly at times in the DS Virgin car as the team closed out an at-times unhappy alliance with its powertrain manufacturer. His half-campaign with Jaguar was pockmarked with chronic bad luck with reliability and involvement in others’ incidents. While this season with Mahindra has not been a wall-to-wall success, there has been a pattern of Lynn qualifying the car well, before a relative lack of race pace drops him back. This, though, would be the case with virtually any other driver in the seat.
Maybe Lynn loses out a little on marketability, not being someone who chases social media followers or who necessarily enjoys being interviewed. He is, though, a fine driver who deserves to be in a Formula E seat for next season. The problem, as with any other form of top-level motorsport, is that there is a finite number of teams - going down by one or, possibly, two, with Abt’s plans to run the ex-Audi franchise slot with a new powertrain stalling, and DS Techeetah discussing their future internally.
Any team looking for a quick driver who has mastered the foibles of the Gen2 package will be interested in Alex Lynn. Formula E’s driver market tends not to start in earnest until during the final round, which this time takes place in Berlin; there is time for Lynn to discuss his future with team principals. If the music stops and he is without a seat, sportscar racing is expanding in 2022, and his experience with Aston Martin would make him an asset in that arena.