Written by Apostolos Papageorgiou, Edited by Ishani Aziz
This year’s London E-Prix has been largely dominated by one man: Jake Dennis. He started on pole for both races and ending up on the podium two times in two days, including a win and two fastest laps. All this resulted in a 51-point haul out of a possible 59, the most any driver has scored in a single weekend in the sport and over double of what the Brit scored in the other 12 rounds this year. This great showing couldn’t come at a better time for Dennis, who hasn’t been performing at his best for most of the season.
Before we take a look at this year’s results, let’s have a rundown of Dennis’s career. Having found success in his karting days, the man from Nuneaton moved on to Formula Renault and InterSteps, dominating the latter. In 2016, Dennis moved to GP3, ending the season in fourth. The Briton also became a development driver for Red Bull Racing, a role which he still holds to this day, resulting in two tests with the team, at Barcelona and the Hungaroring, that year. After trying his hands at GT racing, including DTM and ADAC GT Masters, he was signed by the BMW i Andretti Formula E team for the 2021 season.
After failing to score points in the first four rounds, Dennis managed to score his first points at the first of two Valencia E-Prixs, in a chaotic race where a lot of the drivers ran out of energy. The rest of Dennis’s season was rather mediocre, winning the first of two London races being the only other highlight. Despite that, Dennis started the final race in Berlin with a good chance of becoming champion, in his rookie season. Although he was quickly out after a crash, he still finished the year third on 91 points, only eight behind Nyck De Vries in first place.
Dennis made a good start to this year’s championship, finishing on the podium at the opening round in Diriyah, followed by a fifth place on the same track the next day. Things quickly took a turn for the worse, as he failed to score points in four out the next six rounds, including both races held at Rome and Berlin. This, effectively, left the Briton out of championship contention. However, starting from round eight at Jakarta, Dennis has been on an unbroken points scoring streak for six races straight. This culminated in his stellar showing in London, where he earned his first win in over a year, leading every lap of the E-Prix, and his third overall.
Even with that great performance, Dennis is still sitting in ninth in the standings and is mathematically out of the running in the championship, despite scoring more points than last year. So, with that in mind, did Jake Dennis save his season? In a way, yes. He showed the speed and talent Andretti saw in him in 2021. While there is no denying he is fast, he needs to improve on his consistency if he’s ever going to become a Formula E champion. 2022 has been an improvement compared to his rookie season, but clearly there is still work to be done. For now though, Dennis can relax and look forward to, like everyone else, to the season 8 finale, where he’ll be hoping for another solid result to boost his confidence for next year’s regulation changes.
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