Andretti's Dennis wins first FE race of Gen3 era in Mexico City

Avalanche Andretti's Jake Dennis came out on top in Saturday's safety car-packed opening round of the 2023 FIA ABB Formula E Championship held in Mexico City.

Dennis held a comfortable advantage at the checkered flag, with Porsche's Pascal Wehrlein and Mahindra's Lucas di Grassi completing FE's maiden Gen3 podium.

From pole, di Grassi led the field off the line, with Dennis and NEOM McLaren's Jake Hughes in hot pursuit.

But there was commotion from the outset when ABT's Robin Frijns crashed into the back of Nissan's Norman Nato at the Turn 10, an incident in which the former suffered a broken wrist while the Frenchman was also out on the spot.

Dennis' attempts to pressure di Grassi were thwarted by two additional deployments of the safety car, but when the action resumed the Briton completed a successful lunge down the inside of di Grassi at the hairpin to take command of proceedings.

Dennis was in the process of building his lead when a mistake by Edoardo Mortara triggered another neutralization. The Andretti charger nevertheless picked up where he had left off when the track went green and managed to put some significant air between himself and di Grassi.

Behind however, Wehrlein capitalized on his out-of-sequence Attack Mode to power past di Grassi. But the German remained outpaced by Dennis who crossed the finish line with a massive 7.8 second lead over the Porsche driver.

In the extra time period during which five extra laps were added due to the safety car neutralization, di Grassi managed to fend off Hughes who was eventually pipped to P5 by André Lotterer.

Jake Dennis' fastest lap also earned the Briton additional points in the championship.

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