In the roll call of surprising yet ultimately inspired driver choices, Jake Dennis’s bolt-from-the-blue signature on a BMW Andretti contract in October 2020 was clearly visionary.
Back then, I wrote that his arrival in Formula E came about due to him being “very highly-rated by many in the industry from one of sportscars’ most decorated professional teams, Jota, to Red Bull’s F1 operation – where Dennis is highly valued as one of the most exceptional simulator drivers in the business”.
That wasn’t just a stab in the dark throwaway paragraph. I’d seen Dennis at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2016 and having known his then team boss at Jota, Sam Hignett, for a couple of decades I trusted his judgement as he raved about Dennis’s many attributes.
But aligning all that good stuff, and then judging it, within the hot house of Formula E would be a longer-term project, wouldn’t it?
Not really, no. Within four races Dennis was bang on it in Formula E. When the gloves started to come off he started to excel and by the sixth round at Valencia he controlled the race and took the first of his five E-Prix victories to date.
Dennis had beaten several BMW factory drivers to the seat with some strong simulator and track tests in the late summer of 2020. Amid the chaos of the first pandemic summer, Dennis made sure his talent was evident and forced BMW and Andretti to act.
“It’s been such a steep curve in my career of being a top level GT driver to now,” Dennis tells The Race.
“That’s such a small little bubble in motorsport. Once you’re in it, you think GT racing is so big, but then when you move outside of it, you look back and go, ‘Right, this is really another step of the level of quality of drivers and the personnel working in here’. To obviously be champion is incredible.”
Yet, just six weeks after his signature on that BMW contract had dried, the marque dropped a bombshell announcement that it would exit Formula E. Now, Dennis wondered if it was all too good to be true after all.
He had a short-term deal with the team and knew he had to make the most of it. This was a last chance at single-seater success and with Formula E gaining world championship status for 2021, he saw a golden opportunity to finally get the recognition he and so many others believed he deserved.
Dennis’s likeable and uncomplicated cheeky-chappy character can often be deceptive. In his professional life, he is as dedicated as the more overt cerebral and studious personalities in the pitlane. His dedication and desire are so compelling that he instantly gained the respect of the Andretti team in late 2020 even before he had driven a race with it.
That was built upon to become something irresistible: wins, and eventually his well-deserved title. But after the BMW withdrawal there was so much work to do. Dennis rolled up his sleeves along with the rest of the team.
Born again operations are familiar in Formula E. NIO and all its iterations; DS Techeetah to DS Penske; DS Virgin to Envision; and so on. In Andretti’s case it was not so obvious but a great deal of the 2020 team was knocked down and rebuilt in 2021. But it must have surprised Dennis how quickly it got its act together?
“It did to be fair,” Dennis opines. “We learned a lot last year [the 2022 season], when the team departed from BMW it was a big learning curve for everyone.
“Both my engineers were new, a lot of the energy management side was new, but we built the foundations, we’ve kept it all the same. And the guys are now working at such a high level. It’s really impressive to see.”
Commercially and operationally for a while it had looked touch-and-go in terms of how Andretti would reshape it all.
One of the unsung heroes in all this is team manager Campbell Hobson. He joined Andretti from DS Techeetah in late 2018 but it was in 2020 that he was tasked with putting together the operational end of what is now the title-winning Andretti squad, together with team principal Roger Griffiths.
Hobson recruited shrewdly and made sure that the metamorphosis from BMW i Andretti to Avalanche Andretti was as smooth as possible.
On the commercial side, title sponsor Avalanche joined in the autumn of 2021 too and one of those who has been key to looking after that side of the business, occasional The Race columnist Jim Wright, reckons the transition was handled exceptionally.
“Between Roger and JF [Thormann, Andretti president], they put together a deal with BMW, which laid the foundation,” says Wright.
“After that the credit goes squarely to Campbell Hobson, for putting together the staff because obviously, there were a lot of staff losses on the engineering side.
“Some of those people stayed with us and morphed over from BMW to Andretti, and then others were brought in by Campbell, and he deserves full credit for that, because he’s put that together and done it in a very, very good way.”
Dennis was a crucial part of this transition but it was not all sweetness and light. His management team, headed by the ADD Management stable, was rightly touting its man around to an extent and there was interest both for 2022 and 2023.
There was a time when Dennis might have been a McLaren driver, just as he could have been riding a Big Cat around next season for Jaguar. But Andretti got the lock on him tightened as it went into its first season with Porsche power and both the team and Dennis’s camp can be pleased with that outcome right now.
“You know, on the flight back from Rome I observed Jake a bit,” says Wright.
“Some of the other drivers were also on that plane and they just zonked out or were watching movies or whatever. Jake Dennis replayed every minute of both races on his laptop.
“On several occasions he leaned over to Sean [McGill] his engineer and he was like, ‘Why did we do that there?’ and, ‘Why are they taking the attack mode then’ etc. I found it interesting that he wasn’t resting on any laurels.”
Dennis has also worked on his all-round fitness and well-being. He has a strong relationship with his partner Lexi, and even brought along his dog Billy for extra support in London.
Bring your kid to work kinda day! 🐶 pic.twitter.com/5ntXZ6urVO
— Jake Dennis (@JakeDennis19) July 27, 2023
These may seem peripheral things in the overall story of Jake Dennis’s success this season but it all helps, it all counts.
Another nice case study is how he enters the Andretti garage at races.
Irrespective of who is in the Andretti garage on any given morning, and even if team big-wigs Michael Andretti or JF Thormann are there, Dennis greets his and his team-mate’s team members first and shares some banter.
Dennis will do that before he sees the big guns, and team owner Andretti will like that because at the start of the day and at the end of it, they are the people Dennis is closest to and to whom he owes some of his biggest successes.
That doesn’t go unnoticed, just like Dennis’s remarkable 2023 hasn’t. Truth is that Dennis is content and happy at Andretti, just as happy as Michael Andretti is to bat away interest in one of his and the team’s major assets – who has every chance to add more titles for the team in the coming years.
Keyword: New Formula E champ a BMW masterstroke Andretti maximised instead