Controversial Dennis-De Vries clash brings drivers’ fears to surface

The spectacular incident that compromised long-time leaders Jake Dennis and Nyck de Vries in Jakarta featured a hidden hot topic that was discussed in depth the day before the Formula E race.

The Race can reveal that a number of senior Formula E drivers met with race director Marek Hanaczewski on Friday morning, prior to the formal drivers’ briefing, to discuss past penalty inconsistencies and the topic of moving and reacting to other competitors in the heat of wheel-to-wheel battle.

It is believed that some examples from this season were specifically looked at in the pre-meeting and it was agreed that driver discipline on making a single move would be specifically mentioned and re-enforced at the following drivers’ briefing.

This is understood not to have occurred and then triggered a debate amongst the drivers and race director Hanaczewski about more protocols on driver discipline and particularly consistency in the application of penalties.

The Race has also learned that more stringent rules of engagement were articulated to drivers as being drawn up for the next rounds in Berlin.

This has caused frustration with drivers that it was not in place for Jakarta. Indeed, several senior drivers are known to have confronted Hanaczewski as to why they could not be enforced for Jakarta, but were not given what they believed was an adequate answer.

Article 8.1 of the Jakarta drivers’ briefing notes was laboured upon by the race director and some drivers. This details that a “change of direction during practice, qualifying or the race to prevent another car from overtaking will be reported to the stewards. Only one change of direction is permissible”.

This relates to chapter four of Appendix L of the International Sporting Code and polices the frequent hot topic of drivers changing lines on multiple occasions in battle.

The Dennis-De Vries incident

Dennis and De Vries made contact just after the halfway point of the 38-lap race when De Vries, still in attack mode after Dennis had run out, attempted to take track position from the Andretti driver, who’d led until that point (and a lap earlier had rebuffed a similar attack).

De Vries got a run on Dennis on the outside heading into Turn 1 but then erratically chopped across Dennis to claim the line, wiping off the left-side nose-assembly of the Andretti-Porsche as he did so.

Both continued but de Vries was quickly hit with a 10-second time penalty and three penalty points for the incident, while Dennis soldiered on minus part of his front-wing.

“The driver of car #21 caused a collision approaching Turn 1 with car #27. He did a sudden move and clipped the front wing of car #27. This was quite dangerous,” read the stewards’ decision announcing the sanction for de Vries, who was quite sanguine about the clash afterwards.

“I got a penalty for it, so I guess they found me guilty,” De Vries told The Race.

“It’s not really up to me to decide or to have an opinion. The stewards are our judges and if they thought that I was in the wrong, then I accept that and take the penalty they gave me.”

Dennis was adamant that the decision was just, telling The Race: “It was quite clear whose fault it was.

“I’m just driving down the straight in a straight line. And then, obviously, he swerves and chops off my front wing.”

“He obviously got the penalty for a reason,” added Dennis. “So, I think the stewards know whose fault it was. Thankfully I could carry on. But that wasn’t really what ruined my race.”

What did alter Dennis’s attempt to end his long wait for a win, which stretches back to Riyadh in January 2024, was an issue at the restart after the first full course yellow period of the race that left him unable to switch off his designated ‘full course yellow’ mode via his steering wheel.

“We had a pretty flawless race until it wasn’t,” he said.

“The start was great. The first sort of 30-40% of the race was really smooth and we managed everything well, so we were well in control of the first attack.

“Then, at the second attack, it started to slip away from us. We obviously had some incident with De Vries, which was very dangerous from his side. But thankfully we got away with it and we could continue.

“We then [had] an issue under the FCY, which obviously cost us the win. We’re still investigating what actually happened, to be honest.”

De Vries had dropped out of contention prior to that with his car in the red unsafe mode just as the full course yellow period started.

Consistency questioned again

There were several other incidents in the race that ultimately did not get punished in the same way as de Vries’ move did.

Jaguar’s Nick Cassidy felt as though he was compromised by an unfair chop and change of line from Antonio Felix da Costa on the safety car restart. This caused Cassidy, who finished fifth, to tell his engineer Phil Ingram to “report that, because we spoke about that on Friday. That was so bad, man, if that’s not a penalty then tell me and we will all do the same”.

Additionally, David Beckmann was investigated for a similar change of direction violation when racing Robin Frijns for 15th. The stewards declared on this occasion that “the driver of car #3 [Beckmann] changed direction very late, in the braking zone, to prevent car #4 [Frijns] from overtaking”.

This incident occurred at Turn 1 but Beckmann was only warned for the incident and did not get sanctioned.

Frijns went on to score points in ninth, with Beckmann finishing where he started in 15th.

Source: The Race