RACE REPORT: 2024 São Paulo E-Prix
São Paulo E-Prix Notes
- Season 11 of Formula E competition officially kicked off yesterday in São Paulo with Free Practice 1 seeing Jake Dennis take the checkered in third and new teammate Nico Mueller classified in 22nd after contact with the wall at Turn 6 forced the No. 51 back to the garage for repairs, leaving little time to rejoin the session and set a competitive lap time. As a result of Mueller’s incident, the team had to use the season’s rear joker tire allocation.
- Today’s on-track action kicked off with Dennis setting the fastest lap time in Free Practice 2 and Mueller finishing eighth ahead of Qualifying.
- Dennis topped his first qualifying group of Season 11 while Mueller finished eighth in the alternate Group B session.
- After an aborted start at the green flag, the 2024 São Paulo E-Prix saw two red flags, one for Dennis‘ retirement, and one safety car, for Mueller’s incident, which resulted in four added laps to the E-Prix.
- On Lap 30, TAG Heuer Porsche’s Pascal Wehrlein suffered a dramatic crash after contact with Jaguar TCS Racing’s Nick Cassidy flipped his Porsche 99X Electric on the exit of Turn 6, causing the second red flag of the race.
Tough day at the race track. #SaoPauloEPrix pic.twitter.com/qWqiDBPxxo
— Andretti Formula E (@AndrettiFE) December 7, 2024
Race Results
Jake Dennis
No. 27 Andretti Porsche 99X Electric
DNF
| Started | P3 |
| Standings | 18th (0 points) |
Qualifying
- Dennis started his first qualifying session of Season 11 in Group A, topping the group with a fast lap time of 1:11.732.
- The Brit beat DS PENSKE’s Jean-Éric Vergne in the Quarter Final Duel, dispatching the two-time World Champion by five-tenths of a second.
- In the Semi-Final Duel, Dennis lost out on a place in the Final Duel by one-thousandth of a second to fellow countryman Oliver Rowland.
- Today’s Qualifying result at the 2024 São Paulo E-Prix marks Dennis’ 24th appearance in the Duels. It’s also the first time Andretti Formula E has made it into the Duels in Brazil, making Monaco the only race location on the Season 11 calendar where the Indianapolis squad has not progressed into the Duels.
Race
- Despite dropping multiple positions at the start, Dennis made up eight positions moving from 10th to second after taking four minutes of Attack Mode on Lap 9.
- At the 35-lap race’s halfway mark, the British driver had under-consumed and had the most energy remaining in the field.
- On Lap 20, Dennis suffered a brake failure as a result of a technical failure which caused the car’s red safety light came on, ending his race 15 laps early.
“Pretty disappointing result after such a promising weekend where we really thought we could have a good result. Ultimately we had a failure with the car which caused me to retire, but I’ve just taken away the positives from this weekend. It’s the first time which we’ve looked competitive for a while now and whilst we’ll all leave Brazil disappointed not to score points, we’ve taken some good steps forward and turned the pace around. We’ve got some time now to switch off and enjoy the holidays with our family, but I’m confident we’ll bounce back very quickly in Mexico City in January and get some points on the board.”
Nico Mueller
No. 51 Andretti Porsche 99X Electric
DNF
| Started | P15 |
| Standings | 21st (0 points) |
Qualifying
- Before making his first qualifying attempt for Andretti Formula in Qualifying Group B, Mueller’s flying lap was delayed as Jaguar’s Evans stopped on track causing a red flag.
- On the restart, Mueller was unable to progress from the group stages missing out on the Duels by two-tenths of a second. The Swiss finished eighth in Group B, locking in a 15th-place starting position.
Race
- The season opener’s race start procedure was aborted due to a car issue with Envision Racing’s Robin Frijns who was subsequently removed from the grid, promoting Mueller to a 14th-place start.
- Mueller dropped to 18th during Lap 1 to save energy, but by Lap 2 the No. 51 was tagged from behind by CUPRA KIRO’s David Beckmann at the exit of Turn 6, resulting in contact with Maserati’s Jake Hughes that would end the Swiss driver’s debut race with Andretti Formula E.
“A very frustrating start to the season. Free Practice 2 looked quite promising, but unfortunately we couldn’t translate that into a further step in the right direction in Qualifying as we ended on the wrong side of a couple of tenths to the Duels. Some of it is from my side as there’s still to more to be optimized and understood with the package and system. For the race, obviously it can get hectic and there was contact between three cars in front of me. I tried to avoid the one car that was heading towards the wall, but got clipped from behind which sent me into the Maserati. Wrong place at the wrong time. I’m very sorry for the team that they didn’t get away with what they deserved, especially on Jake’s side because they really maximized the potential of the car.”
Roger Griffiths
Team Principal
“A very disappointing end to what appeared to be a promising weekend in Brazil. Jake had been in the top three for all of the weekend’s sessions and was able to qualify third for the race. As the race was unfolding, and a lot of different strategies started to play out with Attack Mode, we were lining ourselves up to take our final 350kW activation, but unfortunately we encountered a technical issue on the car which will remain unresolved until we get the car back to the garage. For Nico, the race was much shorter after unfortunate contact which ended his weekend. Nonetheless, we saw encouraging signs of the Nico that we were expecting to get. He’s still finding his feet a little and learning the package but we’re confident in his abilities. Overall, a pretty disappointing weekend with a double retirement, but we’ll put this behind us and full focus switches to Mexico City.”
