Jake Dennis: “Zero points again which is very frustrating”

Luck certainly isn’t on Jake Dennis‘ side at the moment, with the British driver having retired from a third consecutive race at the inaugural São Paulo E-Prix.

After enjoying such a strong start to the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, it’s all starting to fall apart for Dennis and Avalanche Andretti Formula E, after he was taken out for the second time in the past three races. The weekend in Brazil didn’t start well for Dennis after he could only manage fourteenth in qualifying, something which made his race that much more difficult.

Despite this, he enjoyed a strong start to the race and had worked his way into the points places, before being rammed into by Dan Ticktum. The impact broke Dennis’ right rear suspension, resulting in an immediate retirement. Dennis was understandably furious with Ticktum following the incident and labelled him as a “plonker”, something Brits will certainly know the meaning of!

Nevertheless, it marked another race without any points, meaning Dennis slipped further behind championship leader Pascal Wehrlein. Astonishingly, Dennis is still second in the Drivers’ Championship but is now twenty-four points behind.

The Brit admitted that the side “lacked some pace” in qualifying which is an issue they’re “working hard to fix”, but that ultimately it’s “zero points again” for reasons “out of my control”.

“A challenging weekend overall to be honest. We lacked some pace in Qualifying which is becoming a bit of a tendency for us right now, so we’re working hard to fix this. The race didn’t look too bad. We were in the points but unfortunately, after the Safety Car, the next lap a car behind me caused an accident and took me straight out of the race.

“Zero points again which is very frustrating, particularly when the past three times have been out of my control. But we’ll knuckle down for Berlin and the upcoming European races to get us back where we were.”

“Our race wasn’t great” – André Lotterer

On the other side of the Andretti garage, André Lotterer did extremely well to salvage twelfth, after he was forced to pit at the end of the first lap for a new front wing.

The German started the race from twenty-first after clipping the wall during qualifying, something which cost him a potential top ten start given that he was on a solid lap at the time. His race didn’t start much better after accidentally hitting the car in front of him at Turn Five, something which several drivers did. He emerged from the pits in last and with a mountain to climb; however, he persevered and worked his way up into twelfth, thanks to being able to catch the pack during a Safety Car.

His point-less result did see the German slip to thirteenth in the Drivers’ Championship, though, which summed up a disappointing day for Lotterer. Despite a bad weekend in Brazil, Lotterer is confident that Andretti will bounce back at his home race next month, given that they have four weeks to go over everything.

“Not a good day, unfortunately. We missed out on the points but on a positive note, the pace in Qualifying was good. I clipped the wall whilst on course for setting a lap time near the front. For the race, I had a good start and moved forwards, but everyone bunched up in Turn Five and I made contact with the car in front and immedietely damaged my front wing so had to come in and change it.

“Luckily a Safety Car got me back into the race, but our pace wasn’t great. The team will work hard to understand what happened and come back in Berlin.

Credit: Sam Bloxham courtesy of FIA Formula E