Jake Dennis is the Formula E world champion

The new Formula E world champion is Jake Dennis. The British driver from the Porsche customer team Avalanche Andretti finished on the podium in both races of the season finale of the electric racing series in London and took the driver’s title with 229 points.

After the penultimate event of the season in Rome, Dennis had already started as the favourite in the two final races in London. In Saturday’s race in London, a second place behind race winner Mitch Evans in the factory Jaguar was enough for the Briton to secure the first drivers’ title in the Gen3 era of Formula E.

The event was dramatic when his first rival in the drivers’ standings, Nick Cassidy, who comes from New Zealand and took part in the Jaguar customer team Envision Racing, retired after a collision with his team-mate Sebastien Buemi. Nick Cassidy’s collision partner Beumi had also been left without points in Rome after a collision with his Jaguar colleague Evans. While Dennis won Sunday’s race in Rome and was on the podium again in London on Saturday, Cassidy went away empty-handed in two of the last three races.

With Evans in the works Jaguar ahead of Dennis in the customer Porsche, Buemi in the customer Jaguar and the Briton Sam Bird in the second works Jaguar, three of the first four places in Saturday’s race went to Jaguar-powered race cars, only Dennis’ Andretti Porsche was able to break the dominance of Jaguar power. On Saturday, only Pascal Wehrlein was able to secure two points from the Porsche Works team, which had been dominant at the beginning of the season.

But this result did not reflect the course of the race and, after a protest by Porsche, is also subject to reservations: Although Felix Antonio da Costa in the works Porsche actually crossed the finish line in second place, he was given a three-minute time penalty. The reason was that the tyre supplier Hankook stipulated a minimum pressure of 1.2 bar, which may not be undercut. In da Costa’s case, however, this was the case from race lap 33 until the end. The race was interrupted to repair the barriers after an accident by Sacha Fenestraz in the Nissan. Da Costa’s Porsche lost some air after a small cut in its tyre (presumably because it had run over a sharp piece of carbon debris). According to da Costa, during the race stoppage, an official said he would be allowed to continue without a tyre change. However, while the last four laps of the race were still running, the time penalty was still handed out. In addition, the front wing of Wehrlein’s Porsche had to be changed during the race interruption on the instructions of the officials because it was damaged. If work is done on the car during a stoppage, the driver has to restart the race from last place. So both incidents cost Porsche a lot of points; in the team standings Jaguar and Envision Racing pulled away after Saturday’s race.

In Sunday’s race, the defining drivers and teams of the second half of the season were able to prove once again that their position in the championship was not coincidental. In a race interrupted by heavy rain, Cassidy in the Envision Jaguar won ahead of Evans in the works Jaguar and the newly crowned world champion Dennis in the Andretti Porsche. At the front of the field, Sunday’s race was surprisingly unspectacular by Formula E standards. The rain (only part of the track was affected in London, as the circuit runs through and around an exhibition hall) ensured that Cassidy had an advantage at the front without the water swirling up. As the New Zealander also did not make any driving mistakes on the slippery track, he won the race in a commanding fashion.

For the Porsche Works team, Wehrlein was able to score one more point in tenth place in the final race of the season. René Rast in the McLaren-Nissan finished twelfth and thus remained without points, as did Maximilian Günther in the Maserati in 14th and André Lotterer in the second Andretti-Porsche in 21st.

Thanks to his 34 points from London, Dennis has a total of 229 points in the drivers’ standings. It was a close race for second place again: In the end, Cassidy came in second with 199 points, Mitch Evans, with a total of 46 points in London, still had 197 points in the final standings. Since Pascal Wehrlein, who had led the championship for a long time, could only collect a few points towards the end of the season, he finished fourth with 149 points. By way of comparison, ninth and seventh places in Rome and ninth and tenth in London earned the Porsche driver only eleven points in the last four races. World Champion Dennis collected 75 points in the same period, Evans (despite a retirement in Rome) 69 points.

Due to Porsche’s weakness at the end of the season, the team from Zuffenhausen had nothing to do with the decision in the team classification. In the end, Envision Racing, the Jaguar customer team (304 points), triumphed ahead of the Jaguar works team (292 points) and Andretti-Porsche with 252 points (of which 229 were scored by Dennis and only 23 by André Lotterer). With 242 points, the Porsche works team even dropped back to fourth place – but if Porsche’s protest about the time penalty for da Costa from Saturday’s race is successful, there could still be a change here.

But regardless of whether the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team ended up third or fourth: After the successful start to the season with race wins for both drivers, Porsche certainly expected more and must be disappointed with the rest of the season. The results of Jake Dennis in the customer team show that the Porsche-powered car was also fast on tracks where the factory team scored only a few points. So it can’t have been the car’s fault, which will certainly lead to intensive analyses in the Porsche works team in the coming weeks and months.

Among the less-known winners this season are the Jaguar engineers who developed the Gen3 power unit for the British team – the first two places in the team standings speak for themselves. The Jaguar race car was not only consistently one of the fastest cars in the field all season but also very efficient in energy management. In the first half of the season, however, some of its own mistakes and a lack of racing luck prevented better placings, which is probably why the competing Porsche looked a little stronger than it actually was. The fact that in the end, the customer team Envision is ahead of the factory team is probably also due to the drivers: With Cassidy and Buemi (places 2 and 6 in the drivers’ standings), Envision had the more balanced duo. At Jaguar, Sam Bird dropped significantly to eighth in the drivers’ standings and also caused a few accidents – and even collided with his team-mate Evans.

For news of the other German drivers: Maserati driver Maximilian Günther not only took the first victory for a Maserati single-seater since Juan Manuel Fangio, but also other podium finishes. However, as there were also weaker races (in London without points), he finished a respectable seventh overall with 101 points – well ahead of last year’s World Champion Stoffel Vandoorne, who uses the same power unit in the DS-Penske. René Rast was able to provide some highlights, but also drove too many zeros – with 40 points he finished 13th, directly behind his young McLaren team-mate Jake Hughes. André Lotterer could only collect 23 points in the Andretti Porsche, which means 18th place.

fiaformulae.com (Saturday race), fiaformulae.com (results Saturday), fiaformulae.com (Sunday race), fiaformulae.com (results Sunday), fiaformulae.com (Driver standings), fiaformulae.com (Team standings)