London E-Prix 2023: Dennis Seals the Deal
Jake Dennis heads Pascal Wehrlein in race one of the London E-Prix (Simon Galloway, copyright FIA Formula E)
The end of another Formula E season will give pause to several teams and drivers, who may, justifiably, feel that were their luck or judgement a little different at points in the season, it might be they who took the title. Jake Dennis won’t care about that - the English driver took the World Driver’s Championship at the London E-Prix after a customary weekend of drama.
Season-long championships are won by the competitor who is ahead at the end, not at the start, and yet there were times in mid-season, particularly in Cape Town, when Dennis and his Andretti team seemed to have dropped the ball. Mired in the midfield, Dennis was often unable to exploit the superior regen capabilities of the Porsche powertrain, and when he found himself at the front, the lack of pace of his teammate Andre Lotterer meant that Dennis was unable to play the team game, something considered essential in the bunched Gen3 packs.
Pascal Wehrlein, and then Nick Cassidy, had seemed to be in possession of the best package and strategies to get the job done and win the title, right up to Rome. The lead Dennis took out of there meant that he could wrap up the championship with one race to go, if permutations went his way.
That didn’t look, at first, like being the case.
Race One
Cassidy and teammate Sebastien Buemi got the best starts in the Envisions, with Dennis third on the first lap, pointing out on his team radio that he had been “hit several times.” By lap 10, with drivers already taking their second Attack Mode activations, Buemi shared the lead with Mitch Evans, both of whose teams, Envision and Jaguar, were battling for the Teams’ Championship.
Dennis made a daring pass, into what was barely a one-car gap, to pass Cassidy in the indoor section on lap 11, and yet the greatest drama was yet to come. With Cassidy having found his way back past Dennis, the New Zealander was involved in an incident with his teammate for which most attributed the blame to Buemi; with Cassidy knowing he needed to win to put himself in the hunt for the title, he tried to pass Buemi into the early indoor turns of the lap, with the Swiss later claiming that he did not yield because he had not been told to let Cassidy through - presumably because his team assumed he would do so anyway.
This left, with 21 laps done, the top of the order to be Evans, Buemi, Rene Rast’s McLaren, Wehrlein, and Dennis. The race was then red-flagged after a frightening excursion into the barriers for Sacha Fenestraz, whose Nissan had touched the wheel of Sergio Sette Camara’s NIO 333. The safety car gave way to a red flag due to the time taken to repair the barrier. When the race resumed, after a lengthy delay, a traffic jam involving the majority of the field led to another break in racing, and the reordered field saw Dennis running second, where he was to finish, and which was good enough for him to secure the title, with Evans winning the truncated race.
Race Two
Delayed heavily due to rain, which made the outdoor section of the circuit unusable at first, it took the intervention of maintenance vehicles to remove enough water from the surface of the track that racing could proceed. A safety car start reflected the treacherous conditions.
Cassidy took pole in a close final qualifying duel against Evans, and then proceeded to dominate the race, taking a win that will be of no consolation to the New Zealander, who missed out on the title due to the collision with Buemi in the first race, but who has demonstrated the speed and consistency to challenge again when he joins Jaguar next season.