Formula E embarked on a new era just over a year ago, with the fresh, more powerful Gen3 machines offering teams the opportunity to reset the hierarchy and establish a revised pecking order in the championship.
For Jake Dennis and Andretti Autosport – now renamed Andretti Global – any thoughts that they could be at the top of that new competitive order were a distant dream after a lacklustre pre-season test seemingly put them on the back foot. Fast-forward 12 months, and the 28-year-old Briton is in a very different place; he enters the 2024 season with the coveted #1 on the front of his Andretti machine after claiming his maiden Formula E title in dramatic fashion on home soil last year.
Dennis enters the new season, which gets under way this weekend in Mexico City, as the driver to beat and, in theory at least, with everything to lose as the all-electric championship embarks on its 10th season of racing. But that’s not how he feels.
“To be honest, I actually feel slightly less pressure than I would say I normally do,” professes Dennis. “I feel like I’ve sort of proven to myself, proven to the team, that I can deliver when it matters and, coming into the season, I feel even more relaxed, that I don’t have to prove myself and prove my worth.
“We’ve come off the back of a very strong season, definitely my best in terms of performance and consistency throughout the year, delivering when it mattered. It was obviously down to a strong package from the Porsche powertrain and obviously the Andretti side, but there’s no two ways about it: I’m coming into the season confident in myself, confident inside the team and just hopeful we can replicate what we achieved last season. We’re very much aware how difficult it’s going to be, and the rivalry between three or four teams is going to be very high.”
Dennis’s quest for back-to-back Formula E titles will be a difficult one, with Jean-Eric Vergne the only driver able to manage the feat so far between 2017-19. Getting a foothold in the points could be a difficult task for all given the frenetic and unpredictable nature of races, a consequence of the high-drag design of a Gen3 car that turned last year’s contests into slipstreaming battles that no one wanted to lead, and are likely to be a mainstay once again.
It’s also unlikely that Porsche, which powers customer team Andretti, will be able to rely on the same early-season dominance that Dennis and factory driver Pascal Wehrlein enjoyed last year, which allowed them to share the wins in the opening three races. Come the end of the campaign, it was Jaguar and customer team Envision that were the strongest, and it’s a battle that looks set to rumble once more.
“I don’t think there’s any denying that Jaguar definitely turned up to the last part of the season with an extremely strong performance,” admits Dennis. “It just so happened that Rome and London definitely played into the strengths of their powertrain with a lot of tight, twisty corners, and that’s perfectly suited towards them.
“Nevertheless, there were certain circuits where they didn’t perform at, like Portland for example, where they struggled and obviously we scored big points. I would definitely say they look like they’ve probably found some extra pace, but I think it was just the track configuration more than anything.
"Porsche and Jaguar are working extremely hard and ultimately, we want to beat them, they want to beat us and it’s going to be definitely a dogfight. I’m very sure of it" Jake Dennis
“We just need to not be complacent and keep working hard. I think both teams, Porsche and Jaguar, are working extremely hard and ultimately, we want to beat them, they want to beat us and it’s going to be definitely a dogfight. I’m very sure of it.”
Dennis’s main rivals from 2023, Nick Cassidy and Mitch Evans, have joined forces at Jaguar to create a Kiwi superteam, and no fewer than seven Formula E champions will be on the grid this season. Vergne and 2022 title winner Stoffel Vandoorne remain together at DS Penske, while 2016-17 king Lucas di Grassi has left Mahindra and returned to the Abt Cupra squad, where he has enjoyed so much success in the past in its former guise as Audi.
Taking di Grassi’s place at Mahindra is returning 2021 champion Nyck de Vries (see overleaf) following his truncated spell in Formula 1, with Sebastien Buemi and Antonio Felix da Costa – title winners in 2015-16 and 2019-20 respectively – remaining with Envision and Porsche respectively. Elsewhere, Sam Bird has left Jaguar and joins Jake Hughes at McLaren. Bird is one of five drivers to have made 100 starts in Formula E, and is only one of those centenarians not to have won a title.
Oliver Rowland returns to Nissan after parting ways with Mahindra in the middle of last season. He replaces Norman Nato, who joins Dennis at Andretti, to partner Sacha Fenestraz, who impressed in his maiden campaign.
The only rookie joining the grid this year is Indian Jehan Daruvala, who pairs up with Maximilian Guenther at Maserati MSG, the squad having split with team principal James Rossiter during the off-season, while the driver line-up of Dan Ticktum and Sergio Sette Camara remains unchanged at the newly rebranded ERT team, formerly NIO 333.
With many aspects of the cars homologated from last season carrying into this year, a general consensus among the paddock is that the pecking order from last term is unlikely to change much, at least initially, with a key area of development being each team’s software.
Nearly three months have passed since pre-season testing at Valencia, where running was limited due to a garage battery fire and track action was suspended for a day and a half while the FIA investigated. The cause of the blaze was determined to be “an arc flash” and there remain no concerns with the batteries, all of which went back to supplier WAE (formerly known as Williams Advanced Engineering) for refurbishment as originally planned.
The winter break will have provided teams with plenty of chances to make gains in the hope of usurping Dennis and Andretti from the top spot, and the 2024 season promises to be as unpredictable as ever as Formula E hits a decade.
