Avalanche Andretti’s Jake Dennis came in second place to Mitch Evans of Jaguar in the opening race of the London E-Prix on Saturday, but the finish was enough for him to win the title as the first Formula E World Champion from United Kingdom.
The first race of the London E-Prix weekend at the ExCeL included two red flags, the collapse of Envision Racing and Nick Cassidy’s title aspirations, and was at times hilarious. Jake Dennis won the Formula E championship with one race remaining.
To win the race, Dennis overcame a tumultuous event that featured two red flags, missed runs through the Attack Mode loop and pressure from Nick Cassidy, his closest championship competitor.
Dennis won the championship after coming in second after the race, moving up from third on the road, behind Mitch Evans of Jaguar. Evans’ triumph, coming from sixth on the grid after receiving a penalty. However, being quickest in qualifying, was not good enough to carry the battle into the season finale on Sunday.
Envision received the ideal scenario it needed when Sebastien Buemi launched well enough to hang his car around the outside of second-place starter Dennis into Turn 1 and make a move stick, via slight front-left to front-right contact, out of the Turn 2 switchback and slot into second behind Cassidy.
The pack stayed mostly together in the first few laps but Buemi then allowed a gap of 2.7 seconds to open up between himself and Cassidy, allowing Cassidy to go into attack mode on the seventh of the originally scheduled 36 laps and maintain the lead.
A lap later, Cassidy entered attack mode once more and it was during this period that he lost the lead, slipping to third behind Buemi and Evans. He had climbed to third thanks to moves on Dan Ticktum at the start, Rene Rast on lap 4, and Dennis’s inside on lap 7.
After running side-by-side through the first few corners, Buemi attempted to pass Cassidy but his teammate stood firm, and as he took the racing line for the right-hander at Turn 4, Cassidy’s front wing clipped the left side of Buemi’s car, breaking it and blocking his front-left corner.
Cassidy, who pitted at the end of the lap to have his wing replaced, sent a string of irate messages as a result. Although he was given a break when the safety car was deployed to allow for the retrieval of debris from his front wing, he quickly retired and again asked the camera crew in the Envision garage for headroom upon his eventual return.
However, Dennis’s victory was still in doubt at this point, and he continued to be a part of the action, but his progress was jeopardized by two unsuccessful efforts to switch on attack mode. He was fifth and in attack mode for a second time when a red flag popped up as a result of a Sacha Fenestraz crash at Turn 16. However, he was successful on his third try.
Fenestraz’s Nissan went over Sergio Sette Camara’s NIO 333 after sliding into the Tecpro barrier with its front suspension destroyed. Although the safety car was initially deployed, race control had to red flag the race because it would take too long to fix the barriers.
After the restart, Rast who had clumsily collided with Pascal Wehrlein at Turn 1/2 before deploying the safety car, was pushed back to 16th as McLaren worked on his car while the race was under the red flag. Evans then quickly got by Buemi, Antonio Felix da Costa, who had moved up from 17th on the grid and Dennis.
Envision had informed Buemi that he would be required to use his remaining attack mode on the first lap following the restart, and he and Evans did just that. Evans maintained the lead, while Buemi fell behind da Costa and Dennis after aggressively starting to aggressively save energy.
Buemi dipped away significantly, indicating that Envision was running to a different lap target (one lap had been added to the total at this point, but two laps were eventually added), and he later played a key role in an incident that blocked the road and necessitated the raising of a second red flag after the leading trio had completed 34 laps.
Norman Nato launched an attack into Turn 16 from the inside, but Buemi wheeled in, their cars crashing into each other sending both into the barriers as Buemi attempted to turn in again.
Sam Bird, who was following, was unable to make a sharp enough turn to avoid colliding with Nato’s Nissan and he was then caught by Stoffel Vandoorne, who totally blocked the track.
With the exception of Stoffel Vandoorne, who dropped to the back of the pack due to repairs, this red flag was shorter. The Buemi-led pack completed a catch-up lap at safety car speed before returning to the pits to join a queue now headed by Evans, da Costa, and Dennis.
As a result, there were three uninterrupted laps of racing before the finish line, with Evans fending off da Costa to win brilliantly on the final lap and Dennis rounding up the top three on the road to clinch the championship.
