British drivers shone in the ABB Formula E World Championship’s return to London after a break of five years, with BMW’s Jake Dennis and Mahindra’s Alex Lynn each taking a win in the double-header event.
While Dennis took a dominant victory, Lynn’s win came in more controversial circumstances after race leader Lucas di Grassi was disqualified for failing to serve a drive-through penalty.
Mercedes racer Nyck de Vries also shone on the tight and twisting 21-turn, 1.4-mile circuit that snaked around and through the Excel London exhibition centre, taking a pair of second place finishes to vault into the championship lead with just two rounds of the season remaining.
The two races both unfolded in dramatically different fashion: Saturday’s event was relatively calm while Sunday’s outing was utterly chaotic, with multiple controversial clashes and incidents.
We’ve already explained why the London E-Prix’s unusual circuit was a success, so here are the other major talking points from the weekend.
Dennis dominates the opener
Lynn caused a major upset by claiming pole position for Saturday’s race, but it was clear early on that the 27-year-old’s Mahindra wasn’t the fastest car in race trim. Lynn did an admirable job to fend off Dennis early on, but then lost time with a lock-up at Turn 10.
Dennis responded by using his Attack Mode boost to pump out a series of qualifying-style laps, which was enough to keep him ahead of Lynn. From there Dennis pulled well clear of his rivals, becoming just the second driver this season to win multiple races and firmly establishing himself in the title fight.
De Vries charged up the order after a disappointing qualifying, and a bold late-race move on Lynn secured him second.
Lynn storms back on Sunday
Lynn proved that his Saturday pace wasn’t a fluke by qualifying third behind Mercedes racer Stoffel Vandoorne and Nissan’s Oliver Rowland.
The race was utterly chaotic, with two early safety cars after incidents. During one, Audi racer di Grassi took to the pits when the safety car emerged. He stopped briefly in his pit, but vaulted from ninth to first due to the slow safety car and short pit lane.
The stewards determined he hadn’t stopped for long enough and gave him a drive through penalty, but the team - feeling they had followed the rules - didn’t tell him to stop. Di Grassi continued in the lead, but after ignoring the penalty was eventually excluded from the race.
While running behind di Grassi, Vandoorne and Rowland then clashed fighting for second, which put Lynn into the lead. He then held off de Vries for his first Formula E victory after 40 race starts.
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The rules seem to be stupid too - every driver has to use "attack mode" (whatever the hell that is) twice during each race. Why make things so complicated. Why not just give the drivers a car to drive, and then they decide how to drive it? Bringing in things like "attack mode" just introduces an artificial element to the race, and is effectively an admission that this is actually really boring and they needed to do something to male it interesting.
Great though it is that young UK Drivers are doing well in this sport, watching it, there's a feeling of, it needs to be more exciting, passing seems to be a banzai effort, often with contact, to win the race it's not only the drives kill, it's the team 8n the pits on there laptops working out when do this or that and when, the singular lack of engine noise, only the squeal of rubber tyres and the jet like sound of the EV power, it's just not enough.