Formula E’s Mexico City 2023 season-opener in mid-January feels so long ago that it seems like it was held in a previous phantom season of some description.
Such was the rawness of the new Gen3 car and the herculean efforts of the entire paddock and its suppliers just to get the cars on the grid that Mexico City had weird elements of actually being a pilot race ahead of the world championship really starting in Diriyah a few weeks later.
For Jake Dennis it must feel even further away.
After that dominant win at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez there were two more podiums in the Saudi Arabia races a fortnight later.
Then came a mini trough that stretched from Hyderabad in February to Berlin in April. In spring, hope didn’t seem eternal for Jake Dennis.
Then came a strong Monaco, a track he’d previously struggled at. That lit a fuse of podiums that was only broken with his fourth place on Saturday in the first Rome race.
That disappointing result, exacerbated by an Andretti team error in misreading the laps of the race after the carnage-induced red flag period, was rationalised and digested overnight.
Come Sunday morning, changes affected to the No.27 Avalanche Andretti Porsche 99XElectric were honed and activated.
“We identified where we had a bit of a weakness yesterday with the car and tried a couple of things in the free practice,” Andretti team principal Roger Griffiths told The Race on Sunday night.
“They certainly showed good promise and we felt being able to be out front and control the pace of the race really played into our hands.
“We knew from the way the race evolved yesterday it was more about maintaining track position than energy management.”
Dennis backed up his boss’s appraisal, telling The Race that the set-up changes – believed to relate to vehicle dynamics and traction – were “learnt from Monaco actually and the race before Monaco [Berlin]” and the dominant streak the Jaguars went on mid-season.
“We saw what Jag were doing and thought, ‘that looks quite interesting’, but then haven’t ever really tried it since, so we gave it a go today and it was pretty positive,” he added.
The Avalanche Andretti Porsche axis is undoubtedly still weak in certain areas, particularly in traction out of slow speed corners.
With the proliferation of 90-degree left and right handers on the Rome, every little bit helped Dennis on Sunday. A lot of the genesis of the victory actually came from what was learned 24 hours before with that frustrating fourth place.
Despite running short of energy after that miscalculation, Dennis hung on to that fourth place under pressure from Jean-Eric Vergne in particular. He then used similar tactics to keep key rival Sam Bird under control on Sunday.
“Jake had demonstrated trying to keep Vergne behind him on the Saturday race and he was more than capable of that,” alluded Griffiths.
Dennis’s confidence was indeed so high that he dipped into the ‘Max Verstappen spirit’ of setting the fastest lap of the race with three laps to go and then went ‘full Max’ by trying to beat the one he’d already laid down on the final tour. Perhaps his other role as a Red Bull Racing Formula 1 simulator driver rubbed off on his mentality on Sunday afternoon.
But Dennis’s race was not without concerns, especially in the first two laps when he had the New Zealand royal air force performing displays around him as Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy had their costly collision, and then Norman Nato taking nibbles at him.
“Certainly, at the start of the race we were worried both by Cassidy and Evans and I think if they’d continued to be part of the race it could have been a different story,” reckoned Griffiths.
“Norman did a great job of holding off Sam coming into second place. He really helped us, he proved a very strong competitor for Sam – probably [with Bird] in what you would guess was a superior car, he was able to hold him off, so all credit to Norman and the Nissan team there. It certainly helped us, made us breathe a little easier.”
So, to London ExCeL, venue for the final double-header in a fortnight and scene of Dennis’s greatest triumphs in 2021 and 2022.
His own personal fiefdom could provide title celebrations this season. It’s now all in his court given his 24-point lead. and all he has to do is serve cleanly with his regular 2023-style aces.
But he has to do so in a race which will likely feature less usable energy as the FIA gets set to reduce it to ensure there is some scope for energy management at the unique indoors and outdoors venue.
“The energy targets we have [in London] are really interesting, we’ve got barely any [usable] energy, so it’s going to be a really quite a peculiar race,” said Dennis.
“It won’t be your typical Formula E style race like we saw here, I would say.
“We just need to do our homework, work hard and then hopefully we’re fast.
“Those Jags are going to be incredibly quick again. It’s going to play into their hands with the track layout. I just need to bring my A-game.”
Does Jake Dennis play any other kind of game this season?
Evans and Cassidy will hope he might but the reality is that there seems little prospect of Dennis choking right now, just as a world championship crown glints tantalisingly into his view.
