Avalanche Andretti Formula E Team Principal Roger Griffiths has “every confidence” that his team can perform at the highest-level consistently this season, after Jake Dennis dominated the season-opening race of the 2022/23 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship.
Dennis stormed to victory at the Mexico City E-Prix by almost eight seconds, after being unbeatable at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. After disappointingly losing the duels Final to Lucas di Grassi, the British driver was well and truly fired-up for the race, and he certainly didn’t disappoint. He pounced on a mistake by di Grassi in the opening phase of the race and never looked back, with the Andretti driver having built a sizeable lead almost instantly.
Whilst he did have to deal with a Safety Car restart, Dennis never looked troubled, as he started the new season and Gen3 in perfect fashion. On the other side of the Andretti garage, the newly-signed André Lotterer managed to claim fourth on the final lap, after completing a great move on an unaware Jake Hughes. Lotterer arguably had the pace for the podium, but couldn’t find a way past di Grassi, who defended superbly.
The team have certainly gotten themselves an excellent package for Gen3, with their Porsche powertrain having performed wonders despite having struggled during pre-season. Griffiths hailed the work done by the team to make the car “super competitive” as “impressive”, with the result being a “massive” achievement for the team in their first race as a Porsche customer team.
“What an amazing first race of Season 9 and the start of the GEN3 era. After a little bit of disappointment coming out of Valencia in terms of our pace, the efforts from the team over the Christmas break to turn it around and put a super competitive car on the racetrack has been impressive. It’s massive for Avalanche Andretti. It’s massive for our first competitive race with Porsche Motorsport.”
“As the race unfolded, Jake took the opportunity to get around di Grassi when he made a slight mistake and there was really no looking back after that. He managed his energy incredibly well and he never really came under any threat. I know speaking to André, he’s incredibly disappointed he didn’t get a podium, but a fourth-place finish in the grand scheme of things in this championship is a great result.
“We have a long way to go, but we know the Porsche package has been quick. Hopefully, we can prove that we aren’t a one-track wonder and we can go on to have a strong result at the next two races in Saudi Arabia. We’ve got a lot of work to do and a lot of races over the next eight weeks, but I’ve got every confidence that the team will be able to deliver results.”
