Andretti Formula E are unsure why their performance was so much weaker on the second race day of last weekend’s Diriyah E-Prix, after Jake Dennis won the opening race.
Dennis won Friday evening’s race by a staggering 13.2 seconds – the second-biggest win in Formula E history – after timing his Attack Modes to perfection. However, on Saturday, the reigning World Champion was knocked out in the qualifying groups and could only finish P12.
He would’ve finished in 10th but was slapped with a five-second time penalty for overtaking Mitch Evans under yellow flags. Considering how strong he was on Friday, his sudden loss of performance on Saturday was very odd.
He even admits that the team “don’t really know” what exactly went wrong, although he noted that Andretti only found one-second as a result of track evolution, whereas others found two seconds.
“Yeah, we don’t really know, to be honest,” Dennis told Motorsport Week. “You know, ultimately, the biggest thing, what’s changed is the track. You know, the track evolution, the track grip has been significantly increased and it seems like everyone probably made like a two-second step and we only made one.
“So, yeah, we don’t really know what happened in qualifying. The race went really well again and it performed well. We had good pace, but, yeah, qualifying just didn’t quite work for us.”
Diriyah was clearly full of highs and lows for Dennis and Andretti, leaving the Briton with a bittersweet feeling. Whilst he’ll “never forget a race win”, he did admit that he was feeling a “bit weird” with how everything unfolded.
“I mean, it’s a bit weird, but you never forget a race win and I’m definitely leaving here with 26 points, just more than what I arrived with,” he added. “So, yeah, we’re probably third or fourth-highest point scorer this weekend, which is still a positive. But, yeah, we just need to analyse what went wrong today so we can try and improve on things for Brazil.”
After three mixed rounds for the 28-year-old, Dennis sits fourth in the Drivers’ Championship and is 30 points behind Nick Cassidy. He will certainly be in the title fight again, although a lot could change at the next event in São Paulo. This is because Formula E is now at the start of almost a seven-week break, caused by the cancellation of the Hyderabad E-Prix.
It’s a huge break for all the drivers and the teams and is something Dennis says they’re “not really used to”. He expects every outfit on the grid to be putting in “a lot of hard work” during this period.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a long break,” admitted Dennis. “It’s something what we’re not really used to, to be honest. I think there’s going to be a lot of hard work from everyone, like, not just us, but also the other teams with simulator work.
“It’s not often we have seven to six weeks off, so a lot of correlation on the simulator, trying to improve our sort of workload on that to give us better numbers for the future races.”
