Ticktum takes first Formula E win as Dennis + De Vries clash

Dan Ticktum took a sensational first Formula E victory in a Jakarta race that was brought alive by a clash between long-time leaders Jake Dennis and Nyck de Vries.

Andretti’s polesitter Dennis had led the majority of the race from De Vries, after the Mahindra driver jumped McLaren’s Taylor Barnard to run second at the start, right through to their first attack mode deployment halfway through the 38-lap race on a Jakarta circuit where overtaking was at a premium due to an incredibly dusty outside line.

But the two leaders diverged on attack mode strategy at that point, with Dennis opting to take two minutes to De Vries’ four at their first activation.

While that left Dennis with longer to use for his second activation later in the race, it twice left him vulnerable to De Vries along the main straight.

Dennis fended off the first of those attacks with a robust defence on the run to the first corner, cutting off De Vries’ attempts to go for the inside line.

He repeated that tactic again the following lap but De Vries had a better run by this point and was ahead – albeit not fully, as he found out when he moved to the right, with his right-rear corner making contact with the front-left of Dennis’s front wing and scattering debris across the track.

De Vries was handed a 10-second penalty for that collision but retained the lead through the resulting safety car period and on the restart until he took his second attack mode activation, which should’ve left Dennis in the pound seat.

But the bunching up of the pack had allowed Ticktum – who ran fourth at the start, had been shuffled back in the first round of attack mode deployment, then picked his way back through to fourth – to close in on the leading pair and De Vries’ team-mate Edoardo Mortara, and Dennis filtered out behind the Kiro driver as he took his second attack mode activation.

Ticktum should still have been vulnerable to the Andretti driver even after a full course yellow intervention for Jake Hughes’s stranded Maserati, but as the race resumed after that Dennis suddenly dropped out of contention – the reason for which has not been diagnosed – leaving Ticktum in the net lead ahead of Mortara and behind the penalised De Vries.

And it soon became the lead proper anyway as De Vries slowed with his car in the red unsafe mode just as another full course yellow was deployed after the other Maserati of Stoffel Vandoorne went off at high speed as the race restarted.

That set up a straight shootout between Ticktum and Mortara for victory, with Ticktum holding firm at the front for a famous victory, 0.371s ahead of Mortara.

For Porsche customer Kiro, it marked that entity’s first victory since the opening Formula E season when inaugural champion Nelson Piquet won the 2015 Moscow E-Prix for what was then known as NEXTEV.

Sebastien Buemi had led a four-car train in the fight for third in the closing stages but his was effectively a ghost car in that battle as he’d incurred a five-second penalty for causing a collision and dropped to eighth in the final result.

So while Dennis dropping out of victory contention was a bitter blow for Andretti, there was some consolation as Buemi’s penalty elevated Nico Mueller into third for his first podium with the team.

That will be seen as a timely result for the Porsche-contracted driver as his manufacturer employer weighs up who will have partner reigning champion Pascal Wehrlein at the factory team next season.

The driver Mueller could replace, Antonio Felix da Costa, finished behind him in fourth ahead of Nick Cassidy – who’d done a brilliant job of holding track position against cars in attack mode early on in the race, only for that work to be undone when he took his attack mode (and brushed the wall in doing so) right before the safety car was deployed.

Barnard had a complicated race from second on the grid but still brought home an eighth points finish of the season in sixth ahead of McLaren team-mate Sam Bird, with Buemi eighth once his penalty was applied.

Envision team-mate Robin Frijns was elevated to ninth in the final classification once another penalty was applied, this time for points leader Oliver Rowland.

The Nissan driver started a lowly 16th after a messy qualifying session that included catching team-mate Norman Nato on his final effort in the group stages and later brushing the wall, and despite early progress was never more than a peripheral points threat.

Rowland also had his five-second penalty hanging over him for the majority of the race as that early progress had included a bump with Maximilian Guenther at the Turn 16 hairpin, with the DS Penske driver slewing wide into the wall on the exit and subsequently retiring to the pits.

But Rowland did at least forfeit no ground to chief title rival Wehrlein, who was a further three seconds back and outside the points in 11th.

Source: The Race